forestofglory

Bits and bobs is my "many things make a post" series where I talk briefly about several unrelated things.

*I finished lesson 10 in A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul Router so once I finish the review section I'm working on now I will be done with the 1st unit! I'm currently in a frustrating place where I want have better vocabulary so I can read more but one of the best ways to grow your vocabulary is to read. I generally love that my text books have used actual historical works for the readings. However I am starting to wish that graded readers existed as thing in Classical Chinese. If I had the equivalent vocabulary in Mandarin there would be a lot more reading material for me, so I am considering taking a break for classical to do some Mandarin. But I haven't decided yet.

*I recently got some spring 2022 tea in the mail! Not a huge amount just a bit of Biluochun and bit of Longjing. (and also some pu'erh which not this years tea) I have become so into tea over the last couple of years. But its nice to have tasty hot beverages and pretty ceramics to drink them out of.

* The weather here has been more weather like then normal. We had mini heat wave and then right after some cold rainy days. I'm sure this is normal elsewhere, but I'm not used to such rapid changes.

*This Saturday my group watch is going to watch the last two episodes of Nirvana in Fire. It's been really lovely rewatching the show with a group.

Observations is what I call my bi-montly posts about the natural and built environments, and Bits and Bobs is what I call my “many things make post” post. So here I'm combining the two.

*It’s October and definitely fire season. It’s been a bad fire year for the state but so far this year we’ve been lucky in terms of air quality and haven’t had any really bad smoke days. The kind where you have to wear a mask to filter the air you breathe. Of course there’s still a while until the rains start and we relax a bit about fires. One of the worse smoke events was right before Thanksgiving after all.

*R and I have been eating out a bit more, now that numbers are low locally and more things are open. Recently we started sampling lunch specials. This is a thing a lot of local Asian restaurants seem to do. You get soup, rice and one person sized serving of a main dish, some places will give you a salad and/or a small appetizer like an egg roll too. I find these very appealing, something about getting a small amount of several things just makes me happy. It’s been fun trying a bunch of them!

*The kid has been doing swimming lessons at a local outdoor pool. The last one was last week. She really enjoyed them though. Since the lessons are pretty short I would take her to the pool then sit and watch/play with my phone while she swam. I haven’t been swimming much lately, but I swam a lot as a kid so it's a bit nostalgic for me.

*My local fabric store had been online only since March 2020, but they recently opened up to limited in-person shopping a few days a week, and I got to browse fabric! They are only letting ten people in at once so there was a wait to get into the store, but it was worth it. I picked out thread for my next project, and bought several things to make quilts and more shirts for the kid.

What adventures have you been having outside your home lately?

It's been a dry rainy season so far, but we are in the middle of a big storm. That means gray days and heavy rains. Rain in the Bay Area isn't like rain anywhere else I've lived. It only comes in the wet season, and when it starts raining in general stays raining for a long time. I remember when I was living in England I had a friend visit me from home, and it started to rain. So I suggested that we duck into a museum for ten minutes to wait it out. My friend was very impressed that this worked. It wouldn't have worked here. Since I grew up here this the way I think rain should be. To this day I find the fact that it can rain and be warm at the same time baffling.

A nice thing about the rain is puddles. The kid has been very excited about putting on her rain boots and going on walks looking for puddles. Our street is pretty well maintained so there aren't at lot of puddles, but that just means we end up going on nice long walks. It's fun to see her enthusiastic to get outside and explore.

Today is Tu B'shevat the Jewish new year of trees. I've been thinking more about the trees in my life since last month, when I realized that I didn't have lot of current meaningful trees in my life, but this mostly means that I've have been admiring all the live oaks on my walks around the neighborhood. They are some pretty!

Its starting to get springlike here and all the magnolia trees are in bloom, and they are so so lovely. The cherries and plums are starting too. And the days are getting warmer. I do like this time of year.

Oh and I made myself a new tree icon! Its based on the same photo that I use as my twitter icon. I took it on the Highline in NYC years and years ago.

It turns out that I'm bad at feeling accomplished even when I accomplish stuff. I spent all month feeling like I wasn't getting anything at all done, but now looking at all these goal it turns out I did pretty well. And that was despite this being a difficult and chaotic month. There was all that stuff with the fires and power outages, everyone but me got a stomach bug, plus I don't if I mentioned that R was in car crash. Everyone is fine except our poor little car, which is going to be scrapped. I'm sad because I have many good memories of that car. We did a lot of long road trips between California and Iowa when I was in grad school in that car. But lets go over my October Goals

1)Write the next Short & Sweet
I did this! Not quite the way I planned -- I still have the messy draft of the personal essay I started for this which I hope to finish. Even though I didn't finish that I did interview Bogi Takács, which I didn't realize was going to be a Short & Sweet until it went up. But it is so that count for this goal.

2)Show my cosy zine notes to other people who are interested in helping with the project
I showed this to one person so I'm going to count this as a win!

3)Read 5 online works of short SFF and The Stars Change by Mary Anna Mohanraj
I also did this! Expect some thoughts on The Stars Change next time I do a media round up.

4)Finish the shirt that I started last month and also the new one I just cut out
Done! Have some pictures Plus I made a hat with cat ears for my kids Halloween consume. I almost didn't finish this, but the other day I was like if I don't finish this now it will just be hanging over my head next month so I went an finished the second shirt.

5)Host a birthday party for the kid
Also done! There where so many birthday events. There was family party for fall birthdays. We went out to dinner on her actual birthday. There was the birthday party, which went well -- we made cupcakes. Then there was preschool birthday event where we went to school and helped the kids make a cake. I hope she feels like her birthday was well celebrated.

So I actually accomplished all my goals! I really had no idea that I'd gotten anywhere close until I started writing this all up. For November I kind of want to take a break, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the events of last month. Plus its still fire season. But there are some things that still want to work on. So here's my not quite taking a break list of goals.

1)Finish the personal essay for Short & Sweet
I'd really like to keep working on this. Its on topic that's important to me.

2)Finish the post about Hugos Fandom feels
This almost done. I stopped working on it because the Mark Protection Committee was be a jerk. But November is good time to talk about why the Hugos are fun and remind people that if they want to nominate they should become members of a Worldcon by Dec 31.

3)Write something fun!
What is this going to be? I don't know. Maybe just some silly memes, or silly post about fandom. Or I've been playing around with some fic ideas so maybe some of that.

4)Sewing -- no official goals
So no sewing goals but I'm putting this here because I like to talk about my sewing. One of my oldest friends is getting married next year and I've started making quilt for her and her future spouse. I'm having a lot of fun making it and expect I'll be working on that this month.

5)Read 5 online shorts and start another anthology or collection
Keeping this small goal since its been working out for me.

6)Host Thanksgiving dinner
I'm the person in my family who does Thanksgiving so I'm doing it again this year.

So that's it. Hopefully next November will be calmer than October was. I hope you all have a good month and good luck to everyone doing NaNo!

*N came down with stomach bug Tuesday night before dinner. Poor little mite was very sick, and we where up all night changing the bedding again and again. After having a sick day on Wednesday she seemed back to normal. However this early this morning (like 4 am) R came down with it. So my last couple of days have involved a lot of vomit and taking care of people, and not a lot of focus or writing anything longer than a tweet.

*PG&E called last night to tell us that they might shut of the power again tomorrow. Or they might not. Who knows? The weather is very hot and windy so I hope the state remains mostly not on fire and the air quality stays ok. Hopefully the rains will start soon and we will get out of this fire season before anything awful happens.

*I'm not taking part Yuletide, the annual rare fandoms exchange that comes out on Dec 25, but I sure am enjoying all my friends being excited for it! Guardian and Gideon the Ninth tied for most nominated fandom and it it feels like everyone I know is excited for at least one of those two things if not both, which is just lovely.

*I've already posted my four "unpolished" posts for February! Go me but I feel still feel like writing stuff some here's another one.

*This weekend is kinda hectic. R is away at a con and we have a somewhat unexpected house guest. (She was expect to come visit but earlier in the week, and it wasn't planned that that she would stay with us.) Plus I'm feel a bit under the weather.

*House guest is very excited that I know what Mob grazing is so we chatted about grassland ecology and rangeland management. Grasslands are one of my favorite types of ecosystems and we need to protect them more.

*it's been raining so much over the last week. Very heavy rain too. I've been feeling a bit cooped up.

More oyster work yesterday. I was told I'd be picked up at 7 so I got up at 6:30, I was ready by 7 but my ride didn't show until 7:45! So I was rather tried. Getting up before 7 am always makes me a bit grumpy, I don't mind getting up at 7 but anything before strikes me as too early.

However it was lovely day to be on the shore of the bay, and we where in a lovely spot. The weather was sunny and cool with fluffy clouds, and we where far away from most highway noses so much of the time we could birds calling. It's great to be paid to be outside on a day like that.

So I wanted to get out of the house yesterday, while it was being cleaned. It was pouring rain but I decided to try walking up to the branch library near my house which I had not been too in ages and ages. (I mostly go to the central library which is much bigger and only 5 min more away by foot) However the Library was closed in the mornings. I was quite wet at this point and didn't want to go back anyways so, I went up the nearby shops. I browsed in the bookstore a bit. Then got expensive tea and sat in a cafe for a while. When it was raining a bit less I walked home again. Got there as the cleaning people where leaving.