various things
Aug. 16th, 2020 12:59 pmI am so behind on posting!
Things that have happened since I last posted, a partial list (feel free to comment on any of these and I will say more):
-I finished watching Amadeus, it was amazing except for the guy playing Mozart, I missed Tom Hulce a lot
-I read pretty much Hugo stuff in July, but also because of reading the Heinlein study for Hugos, read the parts of To Sail Beyond the Sunset that aren't set in the future. (I have never read the bits that are set in the future.) My friend CW told me to read this book in high school, saying that her boyfriend had said it reminded him of her and that it was just like her, and it super is just like she was in high school. (I suspect this no longer holds: we read this in the early 90's, it was published in 1987, and we've lived through several decades since then)
Also, I must share that the copy I was reading has the same cover shown on Goodreads.
E wandered by and did she remark on the cover? Yes. She said, "Cute kitty!"
...I have NEVER NOTICED there is a cat on the cover of this book. Neither has Dave.
-I am slowly getting through Hamilton more than a month after everyone else watched it, it is really slow for me to watch things on video these days plus which D doesn't like rap/hip-hop so I try to watch it when he's not around either. wow I can't get over how acrobatic it is, how can you even sing and do all that at the same time. Also LMM may not be the greatest singer but he has this kind of frantic intensity that almost burns through the screen.
-I signed up for my first WorldCon and it was great to hang out with
morbane and
seekingferret and
nolly and would totally do virtualcon again although next time I will try very hard not to schedule a fic exchange at the same time *facepalm*
-that Hugo ceremony, though. As I told
seekingferret, the best thing about it (besides some of the non-GRRM parts which were very cool, like the part where the artist was describing the Hugo Award base) was being able to real-time share the horrifyingness with him and
ase and Worldcon chat (including
nolly)
-it has come to this, I have started to play with learning German on Duolingo. I knew very little before and I'm really pleased at how knowing just a few more words makes a lot of simple sentences much more understandable. It's also kind of hilarious how excited I am to have graduated to adverbs, as they're quite important and for some reason I could not keep almost any of them in my head at all before (previously I could at least recognize conjugations of be and have and a few adjectives/nouns, but "immer" and "wieder" were literally the only adverbs I could keep in my head, courtesy of the Brahms Requiem -- which of course has a great number of other adverbs which for some reason didn't stick). Of course using for current fandom, but I'm also really excited at the prospect of listening to more German art songs and opera, which I've always felt I'd appreciate a lot more if I had any idea what was going on.
-duolingo is edging out my previous "oh I have two minutes of time to waste what shall I do" time-filler which is this tablet game called Heroes Charge, the idea of which is that you have these "heroes" which you collect like cards (they even have a animation of a card which plays when you get a new hero) and you combine them into teams of five to fight battles with other teams. I really can't recommend it, it's awfully lame in any of six different directions (starting with the scantily clad female cards and moving on to the way it constantly is trying to get you to buy stuff, not to mention the way some of the subbattlegames are poorly designed), but I love the shiny-collecting aspect, the plotting out team-building aspect, and sometimes I just want to be able to demolish some enemies in a way that has no actual consequences for either of us and everyone gets up and dusts themselves off afterwards and goes off to fight someone else.
-oh yeah, non-online life, it exists. life is pretty good for us, actually, we have had a mostly pretty chill summer. Because no camps (well, actually, there have been camps here, but I wasn't comfortable sending E to an indoor one and the outdoor ones we tried to get into we didn't make the lottery), I am working half-time (instead of 3/4 time) and spending more time taking the kids biking (A can now Almost ride a bike, starting and stopping are still kind of hit or miss for him) and playing games, and also they are playing a lot more Minecraft when I have to be on telecons. I am not looking forward to virtual school starting.
Things that have happened since I last posted, a partial list (feel free to comment on any of these and I will say more):
-I finished watching Amadeus, it was amazing except for the guy playing Mozart, I missed Tom Hulce a lot
-I read pretty much Hugo stuff in July, but also because of reading the Heinlein study for Hugos, read the parts of To Sail Beyond the Sunset that aren't set in the future. (I have never read the bits that are set in the future.) My friend CW told me to read this book in high school, saying that her boyfriend had said it reminded him of her and that it was just like her, and it super is just like she was in high school. (I suspect this no longer holds: we read this in the early 90's, it was published in 1987, and we've lived through several decades since then)
Also, I must share that the copy I was reading has the same cover shown on Goodreads.
E wandered by and did she remark on the cover? Yes. She said, "Cute kitty!"
...I have NEVER NOTICED there is a cat on the cover of this book. Neither has Dave.
-I am slowly getting through Hamilton more than a month after everyone else watched it, it is really slow for me to watch things on video these days plus which D doesn't like rap/hip-hop so I try to watch it when he's not around either. wow I can't get over how acrobatic it is, how can you even sing and do all that at the same time. Also LMM may not be the greatest singer but he has this kind of frantic intensity that almost burns through the screen.
-I signed up for my first WorldCon and it was great to hang out with
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
-that Hugo ceremony, though. As I told
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
-it has come to this, I have started to play with learning German on Duolingo. I knew very little before and I'm really pleased at how knowing just a few more words makes a lot of simple sentences much more understandable. It's also kind of hilarious how excited I am to have graduated to adverbs, as they're quite important and for some reason I could not keep almost any of them in my head at all before (previously I could at least recognize conjugations of be and have and a few adjectives/nouns, but "immer" and "wieder" were literally the only adverbs I could keep in my head, courtesy of the Brahms Requiem -- which of course has a great number of other adverbs which for some reason didn't stick). Of course using for current fandom, but I'm also really excited at the prospect of listening to more German art songs and opera, which I've always felt I'd appreciate a lot more if I had any idea what was going on.
-duolingo is edging out my previous "oh I have two minutes of time to waste what shall I do" time-filler which is this tablet game called Heroes Charge, the idea of which is that you have these "heroes" which you collect like cards (they even have a animation of a card which plays when you get a new hero) and you combine them into teams of five to fight battles with other teams. I really can't recommend it, it's awfully lame in any of six different directions (starting with the scantily clad female cards and moving on to the way it constantly is trying to get you to buy stuff, not to mention the way some of the subbattlegames are poorly designed), but I love the shiny-collecting aspect, the plotting out team-building aspect, and sometimes I just want to be able to demolish some enemies in a way that has no actual consequences for either of us and everyone gets up and dusts themselves off afterwards and goes off to fight someone else.
-oh yeah, non-online life, it exists. life is pretty good for us, actually, we have had a mostly pretty chill summer. Because no camps (well, actually, there have been camps here, but I wasn't comfortable sending E to an indoor one and the outdoor ones we tried to get into we didn't make the lottery), I am working half-time (instead of 3/4 time) and spending more time taking the kids biking (A can now Almost ride a bike, starting and stopping are still kind of hit or miss for him) and playing games, and also they are playing a lot more Minecraft when I have to be on telecons. I am not looking forward to virtual school starting.