I got a dislocated disc and a racked-up back
What I did with Labor Day was sleep until almost three in the afternoon and then bake a batch of hermits in the toaster oven we are currently using since the oven proper is defunct. They came out fantastically.
What I did with most of the rest of the long weekend was lie flat on a couch covered in sheep (n.b. household lingo for microwaveable hot packs filled with grains and herbs; the terminology traces back to a sheep-shaped hot-water bottle I had as a child) because I seem to have injured my back in some fashion of unknown etiology which caused worsening ache on and off all through the last week before escalating to excruciating impairment. I didn't appreciate it. I suppose I will have to call someone to make sure my vertebrae are where I last left them.
While prone, I re-read Joan Aiken's Midnight Is a Place (1974) reminding me that I consider![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thisbluespirit's "there was a darkness, call it solitude" functionally canonical. The edition of my childhood is the small red-edged Pocket Books paperback whose much-scuffed cover has been slowly working loose of its spine for years, additionally defaced by a previous owner who scrawled "GRISCOM" in permanent marker across not just the flyleaf but the faces of the protagonists, who you would have thought had enough to contend with already. Also part of the prone re-read was Dorothy J. Heydt's The Witch of Syracuse (2017), the cycle of third-century-BCE classical fantasies which I am incapable of not thinking of as the Cynthiad. It even has a katabasis, and for that matter a nekyia. I never warmed to her treatment of Tanit or the Carthaginians or perhaps even interpretatio romana, but it didn't matter; I wish it had been collected in print in its author's lifetime. I am glad I had the chance to tell her how happy I would be with even a self-published e-book and then find out later that she had done exactly that.
It has been raining all day. I hope it is useful for the water table. I can't believe I didn't know until two days ago that Boston depends on groundwater to keep the pilings of some of its oldest buildings from rotting like the roots of drought-starved trees as the one-time tidal flats overlaid with landfill into which they were driven dry out. I have been calling Boston a city of water for years. I knew about the sea-rise of climate change, not about this sinking of water from the earth. And here we are once again in between, as fragilely balanced as the land-shaping engineers of the nineteenth century would never have credited, and what is it two centuries in the future that we would never credit now?
What I did with most of the rest of the long weekend was lie flat on a couch covered in sheep (n.b. household lingo for microwaveable hot packs filled with grains and herbs; the terminology traces back to a sheep-shaped hot-water bottle I had as a child) because I seem to have injured my back in some fashion of unknown etiology which caused worsening ache on and off all through the last week before escalating to excruciating impairment. I didn't appreciate it. I suppose I will have to call someone to make sure my vertebrae are where I last left them.
While prone, I re-read Joan Aiken's Midnight Is a Place (1974) reminding me that I consider
thisbluespirit's "there was a darkness, call it solitude" functionally canonical. The edition of my childhood is the small red-edged Pocket Books paperback whose much-scuffed cover has been slowly working loose of its spine for years, additionally defaced by a previous owner who scrawled "GRISCOM" in permanent marker across not just the flyleaf but the faces of the protagonists, who you would have thought had enough to contend with already. Also part of the prone re-read was Dorothy J. Heydt's The Witch of Syracuse (2017), the cycle of third-century-BCE classical fantasies which I am incapable of not thinking of as the Cynthiad. It even has a katabasis, and for that matter a nekyia. I never warmed to her treatment of Tanit or the Carthaginians or perhaps even interpretatio romana, but it didn't matter; I wish it had been collected in print in its author's lifetime. I am glad I had the chance to tell her how happy I would be with even a self-published e-book and then find out later that she had done exactly that.
It has been raining all day. I hope it is useful for the water table. I can't believe I didn't know until two days ago that Boston depends on groundwater to keep the pilings of some of its oldest buildings from rotting like the roots of drought-starved trees as the one-time tidal flats overlaid with landfill into which they were driven dry out. I have been calling Boston a city of water for years. I knew about the sea-rise of climate change, not about this sinking of water from the earth. And here we are once again in between, as fragilely balanced as the land-shaping engineers of the nineteenth century would never have credited, and what is it two centuries in the future that we would never credit now?
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Ah, fuck.
*fist-bump of solidarity*
If it does turn out to be a disc, let me know, I may have tips.
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Also, I am behind on everything, but congratulations on your book! \o/
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eminding me that I consider [personal profile] thisbluespirit's "there was a darkness, call it solitude" functionally canonical.
Aw. <3 One of the few longer things that made it out of my head at that awful time. (I am pretty sure the rest mainly involved Mr Collings in some way or other, too.)
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Do tell!
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The piling stuff is fascinating and I'm very curious about the hermits!
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Sympathy on the back, mine has been protesting on and off for a few days and even with adequate pain relief it's annoying. Hot packs on the sofa and a good book sounds like the appropriate solution. In fact the hospital pain management course I did recommended precisely that - well that and a nice bottle of wine or box of chocs depending on personal preference.
It hasn't rained all day here, but we've had a good thunderstorm at just gone midnight for the past two days running. I opened the bedroom window up during last night's one and breathed in that scent of wet grass that has been absent all summer.
Water-table issues from over-extraction can cause all kinds of problems, but I'll admit I hadn't really thought somewhere like Boston would have a problem with it, it's not as if there isn't a ready source of water to hand!
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Alas, they should not have been so delicious.
Sympathy on the back, mine has been protesting on and off for a few days and even with adequate pain relief it's annoying.
Sympathy likewise!
Hot packs on the sofa and a good book sounds like the appropriate solution. In fact the hospital pain management course I did recommended precisely that - well that and a nice bottle of wine or box of chocs depending on personal preference.
Well, I am glad to know my instincts were sound.
It hasn't rained all day here, but we've had a good thunderstorm at just gone midnight for the past two days running. I opened the bedroom window up during last night's one and breathed in that scent of wet grass that has been absent all summer.
That's very important.
Water-table issues from over-extraction can cause all kinds of problems, but I'll admit I hadn't really thought somewhere like Boston would have a problem with it, it's not as if there isn't a ready source of water to hand!
We're in a fairly severe drought. The last article I saw on the subject estimated that we need about three months of steady rainfall so as not to carry it into the winter, which means we have to hope that it does nothing all autumn but rain. So I knew our groundwater was in trouble because all summer I've been seeing grassy places that should have been bogs or streams, but I didn't realize it was affecting the architecture of Boston, although after the fact I felt that I really should have.
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It's the recipe I have baked before, closely adapted from Maida Heatter's. I leave out the raisins and pecans and change the spices up slightly. They're not terribly sweet without the glaze, but the glaze is so much fun to make and pour over.
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Thank you. At present I have honestly no idea, but that is what I am hoping the doctor is for.
*carefully returned fistbump*
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Much appreciated! And sympathy in return.
Also, I am behind on everything, but congratulations on your book!
Thank you! I am glad of it.
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I find it a little superfluous!
(Thank you.)
*hugs*
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Thank you! It is probably my favorite novel of hers. Certainly it is the one I have re-read most often.
One of the few longer things that made it out of my head at that awful time. (I am pretty sure the rest mainly involved Mr Collings in some way or other, too.)
A superb muse.
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Thank you!
*hugs*
The piling stuff is fascinating and I'm very curious about the hermits!
The hermits are slightly modified from Maida Heatter's! I made them for the first time last year and they have been in semi-regular rotation ever since.
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*sends all ameliorative vibes for your back*
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That's fascinating about the groundwater--I think my L.A.-foundational brain just broke a bit, in a good way.
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Right? I was just expecting to go the way of the Seaport in a king tide!
*sends all ameliorative vibes for your back*
Very much appreciated.
*hugs*
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How are building foundations handled in L.A.?
(*hugs* appreciated.)
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Thank you!
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You probably heard about 1-95 flooding near Providence RI. Maybe all the rain will have helped the groundwater situation and those pilings. But I think
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Thank you. In the meantime, I've got sheep!
You probably heard about 1-95 flooding near Providence RI.
I've seen pictures from friends. I hope it can get to the groundwater. Enough drought plus enough rain just means flash floods, case in point.
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Indeed! :-)
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Thank you!
(At least you have good reading material and a Phil Ochs quote.)
It's true. (I was going to write, "Life is always better with a Phil Ochs quote," but there are some songs I wouldn't want to be inside.)
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"Our church's one foundation is pilings in a swamp:
the sextons check them weekly to make sure they're still dahmp.
For if we should get dry rot, our towers all would fall,
and there would just be rubble where now stands Mosley Hall."
(Church of the Advent parody of "The Church's One Foundation": verse 1.)
(I hope somebody's still checking them weekly, anyway.)
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Gingerly and/or recklessly because of quake faults. :) Binding a structure's walls to its foundation is one common retrofit, and it's illegal to put up new buildings with unreinforced masonry, for example. Being near water makes everyone very edgy for environmental impact reviews because it tends to mean things settle unevenly, then shift, then resettle.
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Heee.
I can't believe I never heard you sing that.
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The parody of that I know if "hotdish's one foundation is cream of mushroom soup," which, you know, very different. But also same.