I'm doing surprisingly well with my Nano project. I'm effectively halfway through (cartesiandaemon is visiting the last weekend in the month, so I want to make my goal before then). So far I have 30,441 words, which is about 30% ahead of target.

Look, a pretty chart!

I don't know if 50K is really attainable; next week will be weird because I'm at a course on science communication all week, so I'm not sure if that will mean more or less writing time than my normal working routine. But it looks fairly likely that if I miss the target I won't be far off. This is really very satisfying, I'm glad I undertook the challenge!

I am not doing nanowrimo, because it's been many years since I gave up any illusion that I can write. But I have seen a few people are doing variants, such as committing to making a substantial post every day, or just taking on the goal of finding a bit more time for writing.

I think I'm going to have a go at writing 50,000 words of meaningful communication in November. I probably won't make it, but having some numbers and a game to play will hopefully motivate me in the ongoing battle to keep in touch with my friends in spite of geography. I'm making up the rules as I go along, since it's only for my own satisfaction, but basically I'm counting emails with personal content, blog posts, and comments that contain some substance and thought.

Now I have Little List the tiny computer, I might even be able to keep this up while I'm travelling, we'll see. So far, I've managed 3821 words today and 934 yesterday, so I'm 45% ahead of my target!

Life doesn't get much better than a romantic weekend in Florence! Well, maybe a weekend that wasn't immediately followed by a week when I have no time at all to catch up on sleep, let alone catch up on LJ, let altogether alone catch up on my life. So trip report, and any other communication, will have to wait until I have time to breathe... I'm hoping for at least a couple of hours on Sunday.

Since I certainly don't have time to say this individually, Shana Tova to all my Jewish friends, and Eid Mubarak to all my Muslim friends (are you still around, khalidz0r?), and exuberant hugs to everyone who doesn't care about the lunar calendar.

So I read Ian McDonald's River of gods about a month ago, and although I was extremely impressed with it, I never got round to posting a review. I think that's partly because I bounced about it at cartesiandaemon and rysmiel while I was reading it, and partly because I'm disorganized. But it's an absolutely fascinating and highly original book.

Anyway, among the explosion of exciting SF ideas, one of them is the concept of "nutes" who "Step Away" from gender, by a surgical and psychological process more or less analogous to an extreme version of sex reassignment surgery in our reality. I just can't get out of my head that if that gender existed, I would want to be it.

( gender stuff, very slight spoilers if you're super-picky about this kind of thing )

Don't know if I'm actually going anywhere with this; the main point is that if you are interested in my review, it's linked.

Some unanswered questions from conversations recently:

1. Is there such a thing as a lesbian icon?
   
   There were a group of mostly straight or at least non-scene women out with a gay man, and we were trying to get him to explain the gay icon thing. Like, why are most gay icons straight women, such as Cher, Madonna, Judy Garland and so on, and not, you know, actual gay men? His theory was that a gay icon needs to be flamboyant and overtly sexual towards men, but preferably projecting a happy, confident image, as opposed to the angst and emo typical of the few male artists who actually talk directly about gay themes.
   
   Somebody asked, what about lesbians, are there any lesbian icons? I could only think of celebrities who are either well known to be lesbians such as Ellen de Generes, or actresses who are known for lesbian roles, such as Alyson Hannigan. But they are not really icons in quite the same way, I think. I did end up offering to make a playlist of lesbian themed music, though, so any suggestions welcome.
   
   
2. How do they make holy water?
   
   This is from the picnic. Of course we all know that it requires a priest who has to bless the water. But how exactly does it work practically? Does the priest bless a large volume of water and then divide it up into lots of little bottles, each of which is holy? Can the holy water be diluted with normal water, and does that make the mixture holy or unholy? Or does the priest have to bless exactly this particular water in this particular vessel? Is there a maximum amount that the priest can bless at any one time? Does the holiness stick to the water forever, or does it have to be water that was blessed recently? Is it different for Catholics and Protestants?
   
   I hope these questions aren't irreverent; we really do want to know. But they might the kind of questions that only make sense in a conversation between Jews and geeks, and completely miss the point of how Christian theology works.

Why, yes, I am supposed to be working. I'm hoping that interesting speculation on these questions will provide a minor distraction, but not enough of one to keep me from getting any work done at all...

( administrivia )

I'm still reading faster than I can review, but here are reviews of:

Diane Duane: Deep Wizardry / High Wizardry
Lois McMaster Bujold: The warrior's apprentice

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Plans for this weekend are really not properly sorted out, because a major point of the trip is to see my cousins and they don't have firm plans yet. But since a few people have asked, most of the possible scenarios do involve me showing up at the Pembury on Sunday evening, and hopefully bringing cartesiandaemon, hatam_soferet and pseudomonas.

More tentatively, I may show up to some or all of: a May week Ceilidh, atreic's party, and the LJ picnic meme. Or maybe not; I want to make sure I have time to spend time with the people I'm planning to see on this visit and not get distracted with random socializing. There are lots of lovely people I'd like to see, but I am hampered by too much annoying geography. I am probably going to be around in Cambridge for the first week in August, and that will be a better time to make more general social plans.

There's a lot going on at the moment at work, so I am probably going to be concentrating on that for the next couple of days, aiming to get a few important things finished before I leave for England.

Addendum 19 June: I'm about to leave for work and then straight to the airport from there. Please note I don't have a UK mobile any more, cos I gave my old handset to Joanna. That also means I don't have most of the phone numbers that were stored on it. If you think I'm likely to want to contact you over the weekend, please text me on +46 73 693 8186.

I have managed to write up a couple of the books I was reading while travelling:

Steven Brust: Phoenix
Pamela Dean: Tam Lin

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The only other thing I've managed to do today is establish that there is no affordable way I can manage my intended trip to north America this summer. I've been poking around every internet site I can find, and I can't get the price down under £900. I'm almost tempted to do it anyway, since I've set my heart on it, and I really, really, really want to see rysmiel and darcydodo and compilerbitch. But it's not sensible; I have to compare how much holiday in Europe I could get for that kind of money, or how many trips to England. And compilerbitch is going to Mars so I wouldn't see much of her, and darcydodo is coming to England in August so I'll see her at least briefly then.

The reasonable thing to do is to come to America sometime when I have more flexibility, so it's not the middle of peak season. And spend this summer's vacation exploring somewhere I haven't been before, such as the remote parts of Sweden, or the interesting bits of Europe. But I am sick as a dog about missing my people. Stupid evil horrid geography.

When I was travelling, I had lots of time for reading and little time for updating LJ. Hence I have a huge backlog of books I need to post reviews of. I haven't been doing so well since I got back to Stockholm and got sucked into the festival season, either. So here are the first batch of books that I have read recently and not got round to posting about until now:

Michael Marshall Smith: One of us

Colum McCann: Dancer

Rose Tremain: The colour

Madeleine L'Engle: A wind in the door

Still to come from the summer:

Jack Womack: Elvissey

Tim Powers: The Anubis gates (reread)

John Steinbeck: The grapes of wrath (reread)

John Fowles: The ebony tower (short story collection)

Kate Chopin: The awakening

Desmond Bagley: The enemy

Jasper Fforde: The Eyre Affair

Monica Ali: Brick Lane

Well. This trip has gone surprisingly smoothly! I am now back at my parents' place having achieved pretty much everything I planned up to this point. ( things I need to write about )
I am not going to catch up with nearly two weeks worth of LJ, so comment with anything you really need me to see. Email me or call me either on my mobile or at the parents' number, especially if you would like to meet up in the next couple of days. The plan is not too rigid for a few days, but probably I'll be in Cambridge tomorrow and some of Saturday, then in Brighton over the weekend, then back in London Sunday evening.

I'm planning to spend all of Sunday evening in the Pembury; the board games evening will be happening, and several cool people are going to be there. So do come along if you would like to see me and meet lots of lovely people.

After that I am going to be dashing around again for a bit, but only within England, so it's a bit less intense than it has been so far. Looking forward to seeing syllopsium and loreid.

I've been so distracted by all the gossip-related stuff going on recently that I've forgotten to update my booklog. So have reviews of:

Rebecca Wells: Divine secrets of the Ya-Ya sisterhood
Zora Neale Hurston: Their eyes were watching God

Right now I am attempting to read a classic Swedish YA novel, Frans Bengtsson's Röde Orm (the literal translation of the name is Red serpent, but the English title is The Long Ships). It's fun, and it has Vikings. But it's slow going, at least partly because it's written in an intentionally archaic style.

I've been bad at posting mainly because I let myself get intimidated by a backlog of book reviews. That was foolish. Now I'm going to remedy matters by posting the reviews I have written for the last couple of months, even though there are a couple still missing.

Ursula Le Guin: City of Illusions
GB Edwards: The book of Ebenezer Le Page (reread of one of my favourite books in the world ever)
Gwen Raverat: Period Piece
Samuel R Delany: Nova

Still to come: Joan Aiken: Blackground and Charles Frazier: Cold Mountain.

OK, now I've got those off my conscience I should find a chance to talk about my life!

Catching up on reviewing the books I read during the Passover / Easter break. I'll post the first two now to bump the slightly embarrassing post off the top of my journal!

Jan Morris: Last letters from Hav
Kate Atkinson: Human Croquet

Still to come: Ursula Le Guin: City of Illusions; Joan Aiken: Blackground.

I should update. For once my silence is because I've been busy, rather than because I've been displacing too much. So, in the last few days:

Shabbat. Hanging out with ploni_bat_ploni. Purim (two megillah readings, dressing up, giving out eatables, a party). Being relatively useful and productive at work and with shul stuff (in spite of having discovered a new-old highly addictive game). Making some progress on my resolution to do some exercise. Seeing The Queen with PbP (note the italics!).

I need to process photos to write about Purim, and collect links and order my thoughts a bit to write the film review. I'm gradually clawing my way up to taking charge of my life again properly, which means not staying up past my bedtime doing non-urgent stuff (or ideally, anything at all). So just a summary to let you know I'm alive. And yes, I am reading my friends page, but commenting and emails are still in pending pile when it comes to staying on top of things.

Wow. I so have the coolest friends list ever. I post something whiny (locked because it's whining about work), and I'm in a really prickly mood and I start by ruling out the easiest ways of expressing sympathy and saying I don't want to hear from you unless you have something useful to say. I come back the next day and I have more than a dozen really wonderful comments.

Comments from people who cheer me up just by being there. Distractions, which are exactly what I need when I'm feeling down. Really sound, useful practical advice. Phone calls from people I care about. Supportive messages from people who are themselves coping uncomplainingly with much worse situations than anything I'm stressing about.

Also, my friends page is full of all kinds of good stuff, which is nothing to do with the fact that I was being emo on Wednesday, but it's really making me smile to read through it. There's a lot I want to respond to, either with comments or with my own spin-off posts, so the generally high quality of my friendslist is also a little frustrating because I can't engage with everyone properly. (I'm also frustrated because I'm missing a large proprotion of the friends page, I'm reading only my default filter and often just the posts, skimming the discussions.) But mostly it's really pleasing to know such erudite and witty and sensitive and articulate and generally wonderful people.

I have also, I think, set things up so I can post from email. Things like this post shouldn't wait until I next have LJ time, which could well be Sunday or Monday. It's not that I'm not allowed to read LJ from work, I don't think anybody is monitoring my usage, particularly, it's just that if I open LJ it will distract me for an hour at least, so it's better not to do that when I'm meant to be working! Anyway, this is a test to see if sending an email to the LJ posting system actually works as it should (other people's experience has suggested that it might mess up the formatting, but as long as it works, that's something).

I have a million things I want to post about, so I'm going to summarize rather drastically. And to make it a bit more interesting, I'm going to write the summary as if I were other people from my friends list.

( what I might post )

Mainly, this is to express how very, very grateful I am to everyone who's sent me emails and LJ comments in the last few days. I really appreciate you, and I can't really sit down and write to everyone individually until I get online at home. I'm realizing that that might take weeks, probably a minimum of two weeks. So in the meantime, thank you all for reminding me that I'm not in fact the only person in the world. It's helping a lot, more than I could explain even if I had plenty of time to write about it at great length.

Today I bought a kettle, yay me. And tried to get some sort of order in my ideas about the project I'm starting on tomorrow. It's amazing how hard it is to think without a pencil and paper or a computer in front of me!

I don't know if work starting will mean less online time or more, really. But it will mean less time staring at the clock and waiting for the day to end. And the possibility of hot meals, which I'm definitely looking forward to.

Thanks for being there, friends list. You're making all the difference, even if I'm not in a position to reply individually.

I've seen a lot of posts on my friends list this year with warnings that the posters don't like April Fools day and will not appreciate any pranks. I'm rather saddened that people need to make these kinds of posts. Do otherwise sensible adults really think it's amusing to play cruel pranks on their friends? Spoof news articles is one thing, but actual personal pranks seem like the kind of thing that belongs in the realm of primary school bullying.

I'm rather relieved to see that LJ is doing something obviously silly, rather than anything actually annoying or deceptive. Considering that they announced the introduction of ads as a past April Fools joke, and now they're actually in the process of introducing ads, anything on the level of some of their past unfunny and vaguely plausible pranks would be in pretty poor taste.

Anyone like to restore my faith in humanity?

My friends list is full of really interesting posts, and big life-change announcements, both of which I want to reply to. However, my mother has guests, (even this 5 minutes online is stolen from my social obligations), and with one thing and another I'm not going to get online properly until Saturday afternoon. Boo.

Let's not even think about how many emails I owe, and replies to comments. Also, the combination of the tail end of a cold with very cold weather with running for trains (yes, I'm stupid, I spent that extra three minutes reading LJ this morning instead of leaving the house) means that I haven't been able to breathe terribly well all day.

Consider this a summary of the affectionate thoughts I'm sending in multiple directions, but don't have time to translate into words and type right now.

I've just spent three hours fiddling and power cycling and stressing trying to get our internet connection to work. This may or may not be connected to the fact that Dad's computer is having serious power problems and blowing lots of fuses. Maman is ranting that computers are more trouble than they're worth and we were better off with card indexes and typewriters and we're going to bankrupt ourselves upgrading obsolete and malfunctioning machines...

Anyway, as you can see, I'm online right now so it's working again, but that was stress I didn't need when I'm in the middle of delicate job negotiations. And the other annoying consequence is that I don't have time to contact all the people I was planning to contact this evening. Sorry especially to pseudomonas; I suck for letting you down two days in a row.

But anyway, let me just say globally, thank you so much for all your really helpful comments on my last (locked) post. You are absolutely wonderful friends and counsellors, and I continue to be grateful for how well my life goes with your collective support.

Author: Barbara Pym

Details: (c) Hilary Walton 1986 (based on an original by Barbara Pym 1970-1972); Pub Grafton 1987; ISBN 0-586-07365-5

Verdict: An academic question is rather depressing.

Reasons for reading it: I found it on the shelf when I was looking for something else, and stumbled into reading it. Which was a bit silly as I have lots of other stuff I want to read more, but hey, it's short, so I've only wasted two short commutes and two tea breaks worth of reading time.

How it came into my hands: Can't honestly remember; I, or my parents, or possibly my other grandmother, picked it up from a charity shop at some point.

( detailed review )

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While I'm posting, I should mention that the new security measures for excluding possibly malicious CSS have broken my journal even worse than I was expecting. So for now I'm using cmshaw's very well written, but rather plain, Widelines style. And that will probably be the case for a while, because I have a million more urgent things to do at the moment than redesign my journal.

I've friended a whole bunch of people I know slightly. Some through Support, some because they've friended me / and or comment on my posts, some people I've met briefly at parties, some because we have mutual friends and LJ is good at creating connections. My flist feels a little unwieldly at 125; 80 to 100 seems optimal to me personally. But then again, I don't have much I need to do at the moment, and meeting new cool people seems like a good use of my spare time.

So, hi new people. Have some virtual tea (or other virtual beverage if you're one of those tea-hating perverts). Welcome.

( The disclaimer bit )

And meanwhile, here is a comment thread for people to introduce themselves (to the rest of the friendslist, if as in many cases I already know who you are). Or ask me a question or two if you want to know something about me. There are no bad questions on this journal, though I might have to be careful about answering if the answer affects other people.

Of course, there's no prohibition on old friends taking part as well, if you feel like it! I'm planning to do another round of the matchmaking game sometime soon, but now that my friends list is scarily huge, it may take a while.

I have several long thinky posts in my head, but also things to do apart from posting to LJ. But just a note to remind me so I don't forget to talk about:

Religion and science

Gathering together some of the discussion about Narnia and the problem of Susan

I don't really have a short title for this, but I want to talk about how Aboriginal culture was presented to me when I was in Australia and how I feel about that and the implications for race relations. It's going to be tricky to talk about without offending people too, and my ideas are hazy anyway.

News update on all the people I saw on my trip

And since there isn't much content to this post, have a link to the most inappropriate advert ever (and yes, it's genuine, not a parody). Thanks to dot_cattiness.

I never found the piece of paper with my crucial information. But I was able to reconstruct the searches I did to look for a B&B and identify the correct place where I do, in fact, have a booking.

Last night, someone I'm very fond of but whom I hadn't talked to in ages messenged me. This made me very happy indeed.

I need a few more icons, I think. One to cover general geekiness, as opposed to linguistics- and biology-related geekiness. I think one for pretty things and culture, other than the alphabets one I use for that purpose at the moment, and possibly a separate one for music. I could consider one for travelling and tourism, but it would probably end up being a picture of a specific place which isn't really what I'm after. And one for talking about food.

For the last category, monanotlisa took a photo of the high tea we (Mona, darcydodo and I) enjoyed in San Francisco. She made me an über professional icon which I'm not using because I don't like looking at pictures of me in profile. But instead I made this icon from her photo. Comments and constructive criticism welcome.

Also, I've put up reviews of Neil Gaiman: American Gods and Bruce Sterling: Zeitgeist.

So it's insanely hot and humid outside, to the extent that I'm not really prepared to venture out while I'm fasting. Instead I'm staying in with the air conditioning and catching up with LJ. (I've basically not been around for a week.)

hatam_soferet is sitting beside me writing a Megillah. We read through Lamentations together last night; Jeremiah really doesn't pull punches. And we got things slightly in the wrong order, so straight from reading that into maariv (the evening service): For God is merciful to forgive sin and not destroy...

While I'm having a quiet day at home with LJ, a couple of book reviews that people might be interested in:

Vladimir Nabokov: Pale Fire
William Goldman: The color of light

pseudomonas is the best badger geek in the world ever! He's set up wireless internet so I can borrow my Dad's connection at any time. I'm back online, and life is wonderful. Everyone should be extra nice to pseudomonas for me whenever you next encounter him!

*bouncebouncebouncebounce* Wow, that really feels like having enough food again after a long period of starvation.