We’re now entering week two of No Internet (it has to do with regulations here, and I’m in the process of trying to circumvent those to the greatest degree possible, but as far as I can tell we’ll either get net access by the end of the week or not until like mid-August. Mrgahgngngl. (eta, since i’m still without net three days after starting to write this: this week is not looking good. maybe next week, but i’m not counting on that either. this sucks.)
Anyway, I’d meant to post lots of pictures with that last post, but I ran out of time/forgot, and since I still don’t have access and have no idea when I’m posting this, well, maybe eventually I’ll do a Picture Post of the things that have been completed around the house. And stuff.
Last week on Wednesday friends I hadn’t seen in…a very, very long time…were in Dublin, so Indy and I went to town and met them at the zoo, where we had a lovely afternoon despite the fact that poor Indy was barely over the chicken pox and not *really* in any condition to be having such a Big Day Out. He did exceedingly well, given his level of malaise, and it was so great to see our friends again. We all went out for pizza together, and Ted was able to join us and see them, too, so that was lovely.
Then we had a Dublin Day on Saturday (when I posted last) to go to the movies, as we’re too attached to our magic Get Into All The Movies for €22/m cards to give them up without a fight. We all went to the Irish animated film Song of the Sea, which was beautiful, both visually and as a story. Ted went to Ant-Man, which is the first Marvel movie I’ve had no interest in seeing at all, while I took Indy back to my parents’ house and then spent a frantic 40 minutes or so working on my part of the (overdue) collaborative short story so Kat could have a chance at it. @.@
Finished that up (well, my bit, anyway, the story’s not done and I expect I’ll have another go at it before we’re done), and dashed off to see Terminator: Genysis with Ted. I liked it quite a lot more than I expected to. It had *constant* nods to the first two movies (and maybe even some to the Sarah Connor Chronicles), and there was a single line regarding Sarah, Kyle and John that I was especially happy with, as it gave a gloss to the inherent impossibility of their timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly-ness. I’ll be perfectly happy if they make more. :)
(I also really hope that James Cameron makes another Terminator movie—at least one—when the rights revert to him in 2020. It’s apparently the first time in Hollywood history that the rights to a film world will revert to the original holder, and I not only want to see what he’d do after 30 years of thinking, “Oh, that’s interesting, but I would have…” but also on general principles I want the original holder of the intellectual properties to act on it once the rights have reverted in order to set a precedent of that happening.)
We made the mistake of stopping at Chapters and accidentally got three new books to help bulk up our TBR shelf that’s tragically anemic (not really) after a whole week of having to read instead of looking at the internets. I have a whole list of books to buy in e-book as soon as I have net connection back, as I’ve read a bunch of first-in-series now and have been thwarted in my ability to just dash out and buy the next ones. :)
I bounced off two of the books I’ve tried to read: one, a SF novel I’d been looking forward to, proved to have the Scots-descended characters all written in dialect all the time, and I’ve yet to get through a book written that way. Another was a fantasy novel that I’d thought was SF, and it…was probably fine, in the sense of it seemed readable enough, and if I was picking it up in an airport it would no doubt do the trick for a flight, but it wasn’t what I wanted and so I didn’t continue to read it.
To my aggravation, it turned out I was missing the 3rd book in the Haunted Guesthouse mysteries that I started reading a while ago, but eventually I decided I might as well read the 4th, which I had. I didn’t seem to miss much between book 2 and 4 except the character who was 4 months pregnant in book 2 now had a 4 month old baby. Otherwise it was okay to read them out of order.
However, I’m also missing Faith Hunter’s short story collections about Jane Yellowrock, and it appears that I missed some Significant Developments in HAVE STAKES WILL TRAVEL, which fits between the 4th and 5th books. I read the first few pages of book 5 and came across TWO things that were presented as fait accompli that were pretty significant changes from the end of book 4, so I went AGH and put it down, but I still don’t have internet and can’t download the short story collections. #sob
I wish I’d thought/had time to download my revision letter for MAGIC & MANNERS, which I’ve had since the end of March or something and which has been stalled out since then thanks to Life. There’s sure been a lot of Life these past few months. :} But either I’ll get net this week or I’ll be going into town to use Mom and Dad’s, so if I have any recall at all, I’ll get that downloaded. My poor patient patrons.
I have a list as long as my arm of things I’d like to do around here. Get the shelves sorted out. Get a love seat/bed for the library. Get a hutch for the library. Get a bookcase for Indy’s room. Get a bookcase for the office. Get a (probably single) seat/bed for the office. Get a landscaper in to rip out the nettles and plant raspberries & blackberries. Get ALL the undergrowth cleared out up to the property edge in the back and extend the garden by 30%, because it clearly needs that. :) Get somebody in who knows how to trim apple trees properly. So on and so forth…although at this point, I’d really just like to GET THE INTERNET BACK.