Happy October. It took me several hours and a nap (which, to be honest, ate up most of those hours) to figure out how to get my monitor to get in formation after I took it off the work laptop and hooked it up to the iMac. It was on, it just wouldn’t show me any sort of a screen.
This monitor is at least fifteen years old and still chugging along like a brick, but it’s gotten persnickety with age and it now turns out that it wishes to be turned on at the same time as the computer. Turning it off and on did nothing. Unplugging the HDMI cable did nothing. Unplugging it from the surge protector did nothing. Restarting the computer gave the monitor a rapidly flickering static screen, to the point that it’s lucky I don’t have epilepsy. What did work was shutting the computer down completely and then turning it back on again, I mean, jeez, sorry? I really didn’t think it would be a problem to plug the monitor into the already-running iMac, but what the hell do I know.
Anyway, clearly I don’t post enough pictures of my cat, so here’s my latest favorite series.
And here she is being very sleepy and judgy, because cats are literally the only animal that can judge you this hard and still be adorable.
September Reading Stats
Books Finished:
- Mirrored Heavens – Rebecca Roanhorse
- Spy x Family 12 – Tatsuya Endo
- Black Butler 33 – Yana Toboso
- The Cartographers – Peng Shepherd
Total Pages Read: 1,541
Not bad, not amazing. Even with the unceremonious loss of my job, I still didn’t read as much as I thought I would in the later half of September, and in fact The Cartographers was the last book I finished before I got the boot. I suppose this is because I spent my first week of unemployment passed out in bed and the second (this past week) trying to herd all my ducks into a neat little row, which meant cleaning, cleaning, errands, and more cleaning. And then when I did have the time and energy to read, I kept starting new books and not finishing any of them, which is why I am now currently in the middle of seven books with no end in sight for any of them.
And it wouldn’t be me if I ever learned a damn thing, so here’s a couple of my September hauls. I genuinely did not realize The Spellshop had purple edges until I got home. :’) I am also now the proud owner of the entire Foul Lady arc, which means my Secret Shanghai collection is complete because WHY NOT. I was originally going to read these books on Kindle Unlimited, on my honor I was, only then my brain interfered and I ended up with hard copies of all of them. And I’ve gotta say, that copy of Foul Lady Fortune was so suspiciously cheap that I almost convinced myself Amazon was sending me the paperback instead and that would not have ended well for anyone.
A quick update on the loss of the job: I love when I forget that I ordered things, because then it’s a complete surprise when they show up. For instance, I ordered Harris merch a while ago and then forgot all about it because it didn’t ship immediately, and then I received the merch and my Winona Irene hair claws and my Pyperbleu tote/Nalgene bottle/notebook bundle on my final day of work and it was such a lovely gift from me to me. Possibly my favorite part of the tote is that little card sleeve on the front, which currently has the Kamala campaign postcard I received a while back. I call her my Kamala tote. Both tote and Nalgene bottle are coming with me to my fall reading retreat tomorrow.
Also, the Pyperbleu order came in this amazing convertible shipping envelope. I don’t know that I’d actually carry it around with me given that it had a large address label stuck on the back, but it’s still a neat idea.
Currently Reading
Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
No progress. :’)
Fire & Blood
George R.R. Martin
No progress. :’)
The Secret Life of the Universe: An Astrobiologist’s Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life
Nathalie A. Cabrol
Current rating: 4.75-5 stars. I am not a scientist. There is a reason I became an artist, but even I have been able to follow the very technical subject of this book. Cabrol has been doing a good job so far keeping me on track, and the subject is fascinating.
My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me
Caleb Carr
Current rating: 5 stars. I could read about Carr’s isolated life with Masha the Siberian Forest cat all day, and the only reason I haven’t made it to page 60 yet is the army of sticky notes I’ve been using to annotate while I read. Masha’s gonna use up all my fancy new sticky tabs at this rate.
Bookshops & Bonedust
Travis Baldree
I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH
Shady Hollow
Juneau Black
I LOVE THIS BOOK TOO and actually I’m not really sure why I had beef with the prose when I was writing the review, though it could be retroactive bias given that I am now a fully rabid fan. I am loving this so much more than I did the first time I read it, and I still want to move to Shady Hollow.
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Current rating: 5 STARS OMG THIS BOOK IS HILARIOUS. I knew Jane Austen was supposed to be funny, but I was completely unprepared for the sheer savagery on display in her prose. I already know the skeleton of the story from the memes (sad, I know), so thus far I’ve been focusing on Austen herself and I have not been disappointed.
Blogkeeping Notes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
I have a site index now, because if we’re honest it was really annoying trying to find anything on this blog. This means I now have a crap ton of unsorted categories because I also changed my category organizational system (as in, I took it out), so the category widget that used to be in the sidebar is now just a genre menu, which was its original purpose anyway. And with that, I would like to ask myself to stop making sitewide changes that necessitate a sweeping search for broken links, because I’m driving myself crazy.
Starting a Reading Journal
Hello, my name is Carolyn and I give myself insane design projects in the middle of the night because I wasn’t weird enough. This month I decided I needed a reading journal after watching one vlog, in which a reading journal was featured, at 12:59 a.m. As usual I got obsessed, watched a bunch of other journal-oriented videos, and quickly concluded that my journal would need to be 100% digital because I don’t have either the patience or the fine motor control for crafting and I’m neurotic AF, and if I end up with a bunch of half-skinned journal pages from my constant need to take off the glue and the tape and rearrange things I am going to be Le Pissed. Plus my handwriting sucks, and you really can’t argue with a limitless menu of fonts. Keeping it digital will also allow me to add and subtract pages at will and I am a massive control freak, so all in all this is a great solution.
The plan is to create one journal file each year and update as I go along, though right now I’ve got a huge backlog of books I need to record for this year. At least it’ll keep me busy for a while. u_u The obsession hasn’t died yet, because I always forget how hard I get sucked into projects that are intended only for myself. I realize I am smashing at least one design rule throughout the current draft of the journal and I have a very clear memory of my design school professors telling us not to use more than two or three fonts in an entire project, but my professors aren’t here and it’s my journal and I am just letting my brain run wild and make whatever the hell she wants to make (within reason, I mean, we do still have standards). So if she wants to use six different fonts and mix them up throughout the document, that is completely fine. You do you, boo.
Visiting Shady Hollow
September 20 was a big day partly because of job loss, but mostly because I fulfilled a relatively new lifelong dream and ACTUALLY GOT TO MEET HALF OF JUNEAU BLACK OMG. Juneau Black is a pseudonym representing two authors, Jocelyn Cole and Sharon Nagel, who together have created the best cozy mystery series I’ve ever read. I therefore jumped at the chance to meet Jocelyn, who came to Baltimore for a book signing and murder mystery party hosted by Charm City Books. Despite the two Very Scary Good Boy Guards protecting the store, I did manage to get in and get my book signed; and, since I’d mentioned that Mirror Lake is my Shady Hollow fall favorite, Jocelyn kindly gave me a signed bookplate as well.
For the party, my team actually lost the murder mystery game because we suck and 2/4 of us were highly impatient and distractible and not very interested in anything other than getting our books signed, but honestly I’m fine with that. I’ve never been good at mysteries anyway. For me the best part was hanging out with a bunch of other Shady Hollow nerds and geeking out over everything Jocelyn said during her talk, and ordering a Shady Hollow ale because life really can be wonderful sometimes.
I’d never heard of CCB, but you’d better believe I am now following them on IG and plan to visit them and their guards again at some point. I am OBSESSED with their gorgeous candy-colored Shady Hollow display. I unfortunately don’t remember the big doggie’s name, but the little one is named Puzzle. Both doggies can be bribed with tummy rubs; the big one in particular came and stood over my lap and bumped his torso against my chest, and didn’t move until I had scratched his neck for several heavenly minutes. The store itself is small, but I was seriously impressed with the diversity of their stock. I no joke ran across To Shape a Dragon’s Breath (Moniquill Blackgoose) completely by random and brought it home with me, and I was also very pleased to find Furies, with an introduction written by GBBO’s Sandi Toksvig no less. (And I’m still sad that Sandi left GBBO, I love her.)
Anyway, both of these books have been on my TBR for a while, and I am so excited for both of them, you know, as soon as I knock off at least a couple of my current reads. I am particularly hoping that the Nampeshiweisit series plugs the Between Earth and Sky-shaped hole in my heart, mother waters that one still hurts. T_T I’m not quite done with BEaS, seeing as I stalled on the Mirrored Heavens review long enough that I am now going to have to reread the book, but I’m real close.
