Cimorene

Reading high fantasy

Wed, 20 May 2026 21:33:35 GMT

I am resisting reading the new Murderbot book still because then I will be out of Murderbot again.

But that reminded me that I had another book by Wells waiting. I bounced off Witch King the first time I picked it up because it starts with a three page glossary of characters with exotic fantasy names, and those always annoy me. It's useful to have a list, but I think I prefer it as a appendix. I don't have any patience for homework that I'm supposed to do before I start reading. If your book is prose, and it's elaborate enough to require reference lists (is my feeling), you'd fucking better be able to write exposition skillfully enough to introduce your characters and places in the text! And Wells is skilled enough to do that. You don't need to read the list before you start reading.

Not knowing how to pronounce the names is also very annoying, but I have to say that on balance, the fantasy novels that try to explain the pronunciation in a folksy way are even more annoying, so I think I agree with her choice. It would just be nice to have an appendix with actual phonetic symbols, or a whole thing explaining the phonology of each invented language (Wells isn't Tolkien. I don't think she actually invented the languages). In things that are set in the real world, or very close to it, it's usually possible to identify the places and languages and thus get at least a good guess at pronunciation, but Wells' fantasy cultures are not (to me) merely identifiable Earth ones with the serial numbers filed off (which is a point very much in her favor in terms of world-building, but it does make pronunciation more challenging). But my mind's ear has to decide what it thinks for each name or I'll be stumbling over them every time, and I cannot actually stop myself from getting distracted wondering about it nearly every time the names come up. Of course this is a set of eternal dilemmas in high fantasy.

This book is more recent than the Ile-Rien trilogy and much more mature and well written, but I still prefer her sf to her fantasy.

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A new curséd sweater appears

Sat, 16 May 2026 10:19:07 GMT

My first curséd sweater was ( Read more... ) Later, purple yarn I bought for myself became the second curséd sweater ( Read more... ) The third curséd sweater is the third of the triplet sweaters we promised to make last summer, originally saying we would try to finish them all by last winter, lol. The other two are done.

1. Wax started this traditional Aran cabled sweater last fall and knitted about 30% of it, but she had modified the pattern to make it smaller, and then decided it was too small (because all the cables contracted it so much).

2. I unraveled it and started over, following the pattern exactly (after Wax had to redo the first few rounds of ribbing for me, because the first time I knitted a couple of inches before realizing I had gotten the stitches twisted and was knitting a Möbius strip). I hated the design. Way too many different cable crosses slowed it down a ton.

3. Then I realized, after working for weeks, and especially right after like ten hours of knitting in two days, that I was using the yarn too fast and we didn't have enough left to finish. This shouldn't be possible, because we ordered the yarn using this pattern as a guide. But it was! And because it was over six months ago, we almost certainly could not get more yarn in the same dye lot.

4. Started over again with a new, much simpler cable pattern, and again got the stitches twisted. It's not like I wasn't checking! Both times I was worried about it and checked twice, then incorrectly concluded they were not twisted¹! At least this time I realized that I was knitting a Möbius strip after only about a centimeter.

Footnote
1. this part is just adhd, not the curse

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Localized tweeness event

Mon, 11 May 2026 19:21:17 GMT

I want to see Project Hail Mary, but not enough to go to the theater for it.

Fine, it'll reach streaming soon enough.

The problem is that it has become one of those fandom epicenters of twee. I am seeing an explosion of nauseating sentimentality and noxious preciousness about it on Tumblr, just an absolute flood of posts from people too excited to remember to tag, and a large quantity of spoilers and eye-watering takes still get through before I manage to scroll past them. These are blogs I don't want to unfollow for other reasons, obviously. I might reach critical saturation before the movie reaches streaming at this rate.

When was the last time this happened? I cannot put my finger on an example fandom that predictably yet undeservedly became this kind of tweeness vortex, yet I am bothered by the feeling that I've seen this happen before.

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Journey to Bad Vibes Mall

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 19:36:40 GMT

Today I finally made my expedition to the mall with rancid vibes! The plan was: 5 min. walk ➡️ 33 min. on bus ➡️ 10 min. walk to suburban shopping center.

Right away, on the way there I missed my bus stop and had to walk back a kilometer from the next one. The signs pointing the way to the mall just petered out when the huge fortress came in sight, and so did the sidewalk; and having never approached it other than by car, I couldn't see a way in. I ended up hiking around half of it and walking into the parking garage, and I arrived overheated even though it was cold and so windy my eyes kept watering behind my sunglasses.

At the mall I did find the main things I was looking for, but I also got confused trying to say my phone number out loud in Finnish and could only recover it by writing it; and also later got flustered and went to a café with mediocre baked goods instead of the bakery I had been planning to eat at. There were TWO sets of charity facers camped out in the main intersections of the mall, too, which added random anxiety that the day didn't need.

When leaving I found the route back to the sidewalk, which requires walking through the grounds of the apartment block next to the mall. (There's a taxi stand on the opposite side, so you must be able to reach a sidewalk there, but that's useless for my bus route.) My hip and knee both started feeling slightly stiff as I was walking back to the bus, something that has never happened when I was out walking before, and I had to slow down a bit because I couldn't stop and do range of motion exercises there. And then I got lost trying to follow the map to the bus stop, and ended up at the wrong bus stop and had to look up directions from there, and missed the bus, but that all took so long that by the time I got to the right bus stop the next one was less than 10 minutes away.

The part of the edge of Turku where this mall is has very little pedestrian infrastructure - it's highways and overpasses and no shade and parking lots. It does have paved sidewalk/bike paths beside the road, but they are plainly a grudging afterthought. It FEELS hostile there. In future if I need to go to a mall by bus I will definitely take the hour trip to downtown Turku instead, even though that will mean lots more people around. (And if you're going by car, Mylly is a much nicer mall than Skanssi.)

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Nut brittle

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 18:01:17 GMT

Anybody have a favorite recipe for nut brittle? I guess I'm just never going to be able to buy it in a store again and making it would be much easier than ordering it from far away.

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The cat separation dilemma

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:54:08 GMT

Just imagining talking to a new therapist or new friendly acquaintance, like...

"Oh? Why do you think you've been in that depressed rut for so long?"

"Well, I haven't been in the same room as my wife in two years because of our special-needs cat."

(I have been, but not to sleep, and usually not for more than half an hour or an hour at a time.)

This situation all happened a bit at a time and seemed reasonable all along, like the boiling frogs. But taking a step back and looking at it every now and then is disorienting (and even more depressing).

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Should I have cleaned out my bookmarks before? Yes, but now's not the time!

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:48:39 GMT

I finally got around to reinstalling Linux Mint on my laptop last week so that I could back up the last two years of photos. Going through the photos of 2024-2025 was wild. Wax and I have both been in such a fog of depression that we sometimes barely remembered the things in them, and it all feels vague and like a long time ago. Haha, great.

Anyway, the process of updating my laptop didn't go as planned.

First Tristana threw the external on the floor while it was in the act of copying, thus more-or-less bricking it (a computer repair store MIGHT be able to recover the data). It's possible that there wasn't very much on it that we don't have elsewhere, but I'm not quite sure without taking apart both desktops to access my hds from Wax's to check.

And then signing into Firefox went wrong and it failed to sync my bookmarks, even though they're all there still in the mobile version. The backup of my ff profile that contained the bookmarks was on the external but had not copied before The Incident. So I need to try removing and reinstalling the browser before I have to give up and move them manually, because apparently even though sync refusing to work is a not-uncommon issue, going by the support threads everywhere, they actually removed the "export bookmarks" button! ( Read more... )

Needless to say, I did consider switching browsers, but that feels like too many more steps to tackle at the moment.

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Green pants (trousers) saga

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:43:28 GMT

Here's another fun ADHD story. I bought a pair of pants that are a lovely jungle green over two years ago from Freddie's of Pinewood (no longer there; they were limited run) (sorta-splurge, because they're "slow fashion" + customs fee from England). They close with a button but not a hook, and I immediately ordered a hook to sew in them, but then I didn't get around to doing that for the last MORE THAN TWO YEARS because I never planned an occasion to wear them. (They aren't dressy occasion pants. They're just cotton twill.) Today I thought to myself, "I might as well sew it in, or I'll never be able to wear them once I decide to."

Then I looked in my sewing kit, my spare needle and thread and button case, the sewing table in the living room, and the little basket full of embroidery tools, which was all the places I could think of where it might be. But no luck. I can't find the hook&bar. I'll have to order another because there's not a sewing shop in town (you can buy mending materials like thread, patches, low quality needles etc including regular hooks and eyes and zippers at supermarkets and the Finnish equivalent of K-Mart, but the larger flat hook and bar that goes on waistbands is apparently less in demand).

I am planning a trip to the big mall with rancid vibes next week, because Wax wants more fun socks and you can't get those locally; but I'm afraid I'm unlikely to find one there either. The last time I ordered from an online shop that would carry them was less than a month ago, because I finally started knitting socks to give to Wax's family next winter! But of course I had no memory of the issue then.

This is obviously not just an ADHD tax, though; it's also hardly having left the house in that time (burnout, depression?) and putting these pants on a pedestal (what a distracting metaphor... pant pedestal) because I'm so jazzed to have found pants in such a great color. And feeling that I don't have any tops that are as good, though I now know what I want to knit to go with them (a striped zigzag or ripple tee something like this, with lavender and green and blue).

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Antique clocks are a problem because you have to wind them

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 11:00:42 GMT

I think a clock that chimed every hour would be really helpful to me. It would be like having an alarm that goes off once an hour, but totally benign, instead of making me jump like an alarm. It would be nicer if the church belltower did - belltower chimes are the best ones, I think. Meanwhile lots of clocks don't even tick now, which I find very annoying, because I like to listen for the ticks and count them.

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False spring is here at last

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 11:57:11 GMT

Ughhhh. Panic again (Finnish government bureaucracy), and trying to make important decisions, and trying to build healthy habits, and feeling too exhausted for any of it - we're barely ahead of laundry and dishes. I want to take myself and all three pets for checkups and I cannot make the appointments.

At least my dad isn't sick! My parents and sister's shared house is experiencing a plumbing emergency where the shower won't drain though. We have had so many drain problems here that that looks minor to me, though it is quite expensive.

Our wonderful Ukrainian tenant-neighbors in the other half of our house asked politely if they could trim the apple trees, which we've been thinking we need to hire someone to do because we have tried and failed and didn't have the tools. The husband there works, studies, cycles, takes his kids out, fishes, cooks, and is constantly buying and selling things through fb marketplace and fixing furniture with power tools. (His wife does too, but not the fishing or power tools; she swims and does other stuff.) The instant we said yes please 🙏 he thoroughly trimmed both trees, and the kids have gathered the brush into piles already. They are so active and involved and extroverted and successful that we feel inadequate in comparison, but we're so lucky to have them.

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My beloved e-reader app with the custom Solarized css

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 11:02:50 GMT

Over ten years ago I researched and read articles looking for the right e-reader app for my phone, got attached to one called FBReader, and paid a tiny fee to upgrade it. I have configured my own font families, sizes, and colors; can adjust the screen brightness in the page; and can advance pages with the volume button. I am attached to the library views as well, although they're not ideal. I've used it to read every ebook I've read in that time — I convert them to epubs — and thousands of works of fanfiction. I won't put up with proprietary interfaces; they get in the way so much that I'd rather not read the book in question, or read it on paper.

But it's started to give me trouble! A few times last year I had to delete books that would freeze the app every time they were opened, but I attributed this to file corruption or a bug. But now it's happened several times in a row with several different books. I'm afraid I will have to look for a replacement! And I dread that.

I can't embark on a project like that until I finally get around to backing up my last two years' worth of photos. And I can't do that until I repartition my laptop harddrive, which will require reinstalling Linux Mint. I have stored all my files in a separate storage partition for like twenty years, so nothing but ADHD can account for the fact that I forgot to create one the last time I upgraded the laptop OS.

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Knitted wardrobe for the hand-painted doll my mom made me when I was 3

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 18:26:54 GMT

I don't have a lot of toys from my childhood with me here in Finland, just a few stuffed toys that were made by my mom. This doll is the first thing my mom made for me: a Cabbage Patch replacement. (I wanted a Cabbage Patch as a toddler, but my mom made me this doll instead, which was even better - she was so beautiful to me, and my mom hand painted her eyes!) This doll has been lying flopped over in a basket on top of a bookshelf for a few years, and she caught my eye as I was going to bed one day a few weeks ago and I started thinking that it's a pity that a work of art that my mom worked so hard to make isn't being played with.

It's possible there will be a toddler in the family I could give her to in the next few years. But in the meantime I felt sad about her, dusty and poorly dressed, so I examined her and knitted her a little outfit.

The doll needs washed as well, but I want to wait for summer. Her body is light pink cotton that has gotten rather grimy, but her face isn't machine washable. My mom says I can take off her head and wash the body in the washing machine; and I wouldn't want to do that until it's warm outside, and sunny, so it would dry as quickly as possible. The face definitely needs washed too, so I'm going to have to try to spot wash it.

All three of these wee garments took me only about 6 days to make, and they're made of leftover scraps (the striped shirt and the yellow cardigan) and a bit of cheap sock yarn (the jungle green pants). But I got that feeling of excited accomplishment with a finished project three times! They have the details of bigger garments, and they're so cute and tiny, even more so than making sweaters for small children.

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RIP 30% of #3 triplet sweater

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 20:07:10 GMT

Wax informed me that it was definitely coming out too small and would need to be started over, so this morning I spent several hours unraveling it after I finished weaving in the ends on the Bumblebee Breton (#2).

The three skeins rolled together into one yarn ball are the size of a baby's head, according to Wax. (Close enough I guess.)

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Knitting update

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:42:02 GMT

The state of triplet sweaters when last checked on was that I finished #1 (a traditional Guernsey using PetiteKnit's Storm pattern in navy blue dk-weight Norwegian wool Sandnes Peer Gynt). Then I took over #2 (a mariniere using PetiteKnit's Marseille pattern in yellow stripes on black in dk Drops Merino Extra Fine) from waxjism, who had already knitted the body, and knitted the hem ribbing and sleeves and the neck ribbing while Wax started #3 (a traditional cabled Aran in forest green heather Peer Gynt). Wax got halfway up the body of #3 before stalling out in the cold snap while I knitted a little bit on a pair wool shorts for myself before giving up knitting in the cold as well.

Nobody knitted for a month or so. But all that time I knew I was going to have to unravel the neck ribbing on #2 and redo it, because it came out too tight/small.

After I ran out of wool for the shorts the other day, I unwillingly went back to the sweater. Knitting in black wool is very annoying because it's difficult to see the individual stitches. Yesterday I unraveled the collar and started over, getting through 17 rounds out of a planned 21, before I realized it was still too small and started over again. The third try is now at 18/21.

I need to order more wool for the shorts and some more needles and sock yarn and sock blockers.

We still haven't replaced the kitchen faucet, either. I asked Wax what she thought about ordering it a week and a half ago, and she said she could pick it up on her way home from work, but this hasn't happened yet.

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It may be an amiable egg

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 18:23:37 GMT

"A nice fried egg, sir."

"And what, pray, do you mean by nice? It may be an amiable egg. It may be a civil, well-meaning egg. But if you think it is fit for human consumption, adjust that impression."

—PG Wodehouse,"Mulliner's Buck-U-Uppo"

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Memorial Post: Rowan (Halloween 2015 - 28 Feb 2026)

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 12:43:42 GMT

Our beloved floofy bun, Rowan, passed away a week ago. He was ten years and four months old (the average lifespan of pet bunnies I saw quoted some places is 2-4 years, and 10 years is the expected upper limit for his type of bun) and was healthy, cheerful, friendly, and sweet his whole life; he died very suddenly at home, apparently of old age. I miss him - he was always more friendly and cuddly than Japp - but I'm glad he had a long, happy life.

( Read more... )

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My dad is freed!

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 20:59:47 GMT

The UTI was the cause after all, but they had to try different medications before they got an effective one, which is apparently why he had a couple of partial relapses. He got to go home for dinner Friday, though.

Wax had the shift that lasted until 7 pm yesterday, and she had to work today and was too tired to go grocery shopping, so tomorrow will be ruined too by knowing we have to leave the house. Tristana continues to complain any time I am with Sipuli up until about 4 pm. I am trying out alternate hours.

Now that it's been above freezing for a week, it's even above 15° in the coldest room in the house, and there have been sunbeams daily. I've swept under all kinds of furniture that we usually don't, and put away Mt. Laundry that has been covering the office daybed all winter, and scrubbed the kitchen cabinet doors, and checked on the bunny four or five times each day.

He seems to be doing well as a lone bunny, but I can't help being concerned about him. Tristana greets him, but they've never figured out how to play together like she did with Rowan. I keep trying to rearrange his bunny furniture to spark his interest and giving him enrichment boxes (a box that teabags come in filled with hay with some dried fruit and a used dry decaf teabag hidden in it: he's crazy for teabags). We ordered him one of those hay cubes, but it hasn't arrived yet. They haven't had one of those in a few years (we've mostly bought a series of hay tunnels more recently).

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It's 9 pm, the ground is covered in sheets of ice,

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:54:43 GMT

and yet this ice cream truck has the fucking cheek to drive by playing its little tune.

It's not time for ice cream!!! The ground is frozen!!! Stop mocking me!!!

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Another dad update

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:06:56 GMT

They thought they had solved Dad's hallucinations but it was a false alarm.

The sequence of events so far is:

He starts hallucinating mildly, images of animals etc

The visual hallucinations escalate steadily and include audio - first talking to absent people, then thinking he is in a variety of different places, finally briefly not recognizing my mom, though he did a minute later

A new antibiotic is discontinued

They find a UTI, but all mental symptoms stop, so they think the cause was the discontinued antibiotics

He starts hallucinating again, more mildly, before the medical team has had a chance to agree to release him from the hospital

He briefly recovers almost completely, but then gets worse again

It seems his medical team is dealing with a mystery again. 😔

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Am I gonna have to start leaving the house in the middle of the day just to hear myself think?

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:12:08 GMT

Cats when Wax is working from home:

6.30 Sipuli wakes Wax up demanding breakfast and refuses to let her sleep
7.00 Wax feeds the cats breakfast and Sipuli doesn't finish hers before going back to sleep
9.30 Wax gets up and eats. Sipuli doesn't even come out of her blanket tent.
10.30 I wake up and Tristana follows me to brush my teeth and then goes back to bed while I'm moisturizing my face.
11.00 Sipuli emerges from her tent to lick leftover yogurt from Wax's breakfast bowl and wants some kisses and hugs. She hangs out with me for 5-10 minutes but goes back to the tent before I can even finish my breakfast.
11.30 Tristana wakes up and comes downstairs to yell at me until Wax calls her from upstairs. She sits in Wax's lap for a little while or (more often) goes back to bed.
16.30 Sipuli wakes up and comes out of the tent to get cuddled for 10-30 minutes, then gets sleepy and goes back in the tent.
17.00 Tristana wakes up and comes downstairs and starts yelling incessantly for attention. This wakes Sipuli who also comes out and wants attention.
18.00 Wax finishes work and comes downstairs.
19.00 Cats get dinner.

Cats when Wax has to go into the office:

6.30 Sipuli starts breakfast campaign.
7.00 Cat breakfast.
8.30 Wax gets up and eats breakfast, ignored by Sipuli.
10.30 I wake up and Tristana goes back to bed while I'm moisturizing.
11.00 Sipuli cleans Wax's bowl and wants cuddles.
11.10 Tristana comes downstairs and starts yowling for me to pay attention to her. This eventually wakes Sipuli and they both complain constantly or intermittently every time I'm in the other half of the house until sometime in the afternoon when they finally both fall asleep, presumably from exhaustion.
17.30 Both cats wake up and start dinner campaign, usually while I'm trying to prepare our dinner.
18.45 Wax arrives.
19.00 Cat dinner and then our dinner.

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My dad is back in his right mind! +pets

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 09:32:13 GMT

The doctor team found a uti and adjusted the antibiotics he was on from his last visit, and he has been his normal self since waking up Monday (yesterday evening for me when I was notified). He should get to go home soon!

Japp has been uncaged all the time for a couple of days and is enjoying spending more time in his favorite spot next to a radiator under the sewing table by the west window. He seems normal and pretty active, although he still naps most of the time (as he should since he's 102 years old). We're thinking we should try to provide a bit more enrichment and interact with him more often, although he doesn't really want human interaction very much 😂. His reaction to being approached is frequently to thump and go hide, even though most of the time we talk to him it's just to give him treats! So his personality is unchanged. 😂 We do think he might be somewhat senile now. He shows some signs of forgetting what he was doing in the middle or getting confused about which way to go in his familiar space (Rowan was doing this too in the last couple years). But he always finds his way again, so far.

With cat divorce and Wax now leaving the house this means that one cat is alone the whole time she's gone. The cats like to nap almost the whole day, but they both also wake up a couple of times a day. When Wax was upstairs working Tristana often chose to ignore her in favor of sleeping in bed alone, but now she's started yowling her little complaints every day. 🫩 Sipuli naps a bit more than her in the morning but is fully capable of waking up and complaining any time I'm out in the other part of the house.

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chronological big life updates

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 09:27:39 GMT

1. Wax Sent to Customer Service Jail

Yesterday I asked waxjism, "Hey, don't you want to make a dreamwidth update about being sent back to jail?"

"Nope," she said.

Wax has been feeling sick (?) since we both had a nervous breakdown a year ago last September after losing two cats. She finally went to the doctor a month and a half ago and had a bunch of bloodtests but they found nothing and, I gather, said the next step is to check whether it's hormones or something and she needs to see a different doctor (a gynecologist, maybe?). But they didn't just give her a referral - apparently she has to call back to ask about how to get a referral, or what, because she doesn't actually know how to get that next appointment. Annnnnd she hasn't accumulated enough spoons again yet to do that (including when she had a week of vacation a few weeks ago).

Feeling under the weather has snowballed into near-total burnout and exhaustion and she has been having trouble focusing at work, and as a result her boss called her and revoked her Work From Home privileges, as of two weeks back. She's going back to the saltmines (the customer service mines) every day, and as a result she's even more tired the rest of the time.

On the plus side, it's good for her mental health to leave the house and have a schedule that makes her walk around and breathe fresh air everyday. Not sure if it's as good for her as the extra exhaustion is bad though.

2. My Dad Hospitalized for Copious Hallucination

My dad (69), a quadriplegic wheelchair user who has been recovering from a series of antibiotic resistant infections and other complications and in and out of the hospital constantly for like a year, has a sudden, brand-new, unusual problem. Friday he apparently woke up feeling odd and started hallucinating, at first things like a pool of water on the table or a black webbing on his own hand, then a lizard under the chair and a cat jumping onto the ceiling; they took him to the ER, and the hallucinations got more vivid and numerous very quickly. He was seeing people and animals in the ER and asking my mom if there were really kittens on the floor. By Saturday he was talking to my favorite aunt and uncle (who weren't there) most of the day and by the end of Saturday he was no longer aware that he was in the hospital. My dad has no mental disorders except anxiety, and the doctors were ruling out various kinds of dementia at first, but they thought it was likely to be something acute. He was having urine tests and x-rays and EEGs yesterday, and being interviewed by various doctors. He spent the early part of Sunday keeping my mom awake talking to hallucinated people and asking her to interact with things that weren't there (some tax paperwork on the table he said he had to file, a book he said he saw, stools and tables he wanted her to move); later he was in the house I grew up in (they moved out something like ten years ago), my grandparents' house (sold almost ten years ago), a restaurant, and imaginary places; and he had a brief spell not recognizing my mom, but he remembered who she was a minute later. The psychiatrists were saying they thought it was probably not neurological, and might be metabolic. He seems to be in less danger than he was at several points last year, but this is very stressful for my mom and sister. They both seem scared. I wish I could go there. My parents live with my sister in Louisiana.

3. Loss of One Bunny.

Rowan died Saturday night, fairly suddenly, we think basically of old age. 10 years is thought to be the maximum life span of our type of bunny, and they're 10 years and 4 months right now, but of the two, Japp has been sick several times and Rowan's never had a single health scare and has also been much more active, playful, and happy in recent years. He only seemed sick on Saturday, but he had eaten his most recent meal (which is usually the first sign of danger for ailing bunnies). I've been trying all morning to get in touch with the vet to take him to get cremated: I got up early to call them before Wax left for work with the car, but couldn't get through (and still can't). I will make a separate memorial post about him, but I have to collect pictures first. It's very sad, but we're relieved that it was quick and he didn't seem to suffer and that he had a long happy life and basically died at 101. Also relieved that he was the one to die first: he was much more clingy to Japp, who has always been more independent and not particularly sociable. I am less worried about Japp getting lonely.

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Two books

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 10:13:00 GMT

After reading most of John Dickson Carr's books — maybe 25? — I've moved onto a few recs for more GAD (Golden Age Detective Fiction) by other people that I picked up recently.

I read The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich, the famous midcentury author of Rear Window and a whole heap of other bleak thrillers, apparently. I might read more later. The Bride Wore Black was obviously, to me, from the first sentence of the recommendation, a major inspiration behind Kill Bill. Tarantino is on my shit list, but I really enjoyed some of his movies, and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill is just iconic to me. Anyway, TBWB is a series of five short interludes where the Bride stalks and then kills five men in revenge. Her motive and even her identity are gradually revealed. This isn't a descendant of samurai films: she uses a new method each time, as well as a new disguise. If your curiosity is piqued, here's the review by JJ of The Invisible Event which sold me. I wouldn't rate it as highly, although it was a great read that I fully recommend; I couldn't put a book with a flaw this big on a Best Of list, and the whole last episode doesn't work for me, with a disappointing and rushed solution that felt too shallow. ( Read more... )

Yesterday I read another book from that list, Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice. This is a 1944 YA comedy murder mystery about the children of an ADHD single mom mystery writer trying to solve the murder that happens next door in order to matchmake their mom with the investigating detective. It's full of 1940s slang and affectionate family squabbles, the children outwitting and misleading the cops as they collect clues, and lots of evocative scenes of preparing and eating food and casual mentions of 1940s suburban life that were fascinating. The tone isn't just comic, but it isn't really a serious murder mystery, either; the puzzle and the mystery take a back seat to the children's adventures. But it's so much fun to read anyway that I heartily recommend it. The only significant flaw is the cops being sympathetic, but at least they're also constantly outwitted by the kids. Here's JJ's review that sold me. I should also say that this book predates the existence of the modern YA genre, and all the markers and conventions that I can't stand in it. I describe it as YA on the basis of the reading level, the child protagonists, and the less serious and complicated mystery.

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the good faucets

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 13:11:48 GMT

One of the many things we learned by doing them wrong when initially renovating this house when we bought it was that you can't just go to the hardware store and buy an affordable faucet for a sink.

I mean, you can, but you shouldn't. There are cheap, crappy faucets at these stores!

What you should do is buy the reliable, standard, plumber-recommended workhorse brand of faucets, even if they cost a lot more.

So we have three faucets in our house, and two of them are ones we picked out at a hardware store and which have given us trouble from day one, and one is one that the plumber brought with him, and is a standard model of the standard brand that is in all the apartments around here.

The crappy kitchen faucet finally, after being a headache for the last six years, reached the end of its usable lifespan a couple of days ago when I turned it on and there was a loud KACHUNK! noise and then the two little plastic screen-thingies that were apparently just GLUED in the opening shot out into the sink. They were broken and impossible to put back. Since then the faucet has just had a big round open end like a garden hose (lol), and when you turn it on the water shoots out and sprays across whatever you're wearing unless you very carefully turn it on only a little tiny bit.

We have learned our lesson and are going to buy the same brand that's in our downstairs bathroom sink this time. We are not 100% sure if we can install it ourselves, in spite of having watched people installing sinks so many times in videos. I guess I need to watch a few more of those and then if we give up we can always call a handyman (we hope to avoid this because we don't like calling people).

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Stores with rancid vibes

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 13:04:05 GMT

When we lived on the outskirts of Turku, going into downtown to run errands was already a bit of an Expedition, because it entailed a pleasant or idyllic walk to and from the bus stop of about 6-8 minutes, plus about 20-25 minutes on the bus, and then walking around the city center - possibly overcrowded, but full of beautiful buildings and trees.

Now that we live in the country, I'm still closer to the Turku city center than many people are who live in a North American metro area. I can walk to the bus stop (5 minutes, unpleasant scenery) and take a bus that puts me down near the center in about 50 minutes. But that trip feels excessive for a shopping expedition.

There's a big shopping center called Skanssi between us and Turku that is more convenient, about 35 minutes by bus, but the bus doesn't actually stop that close to it so you have to walk like ten minutes (it is very much designed to be visited by car, unlike the city center). And the mall itself just has RANCID VIBES. I hate being there! It's something about the interior architecture and the lighting maybe? The actual finishes are nice, the decor is fine, the lighting isn't UGLY. It is pretty dim inside, which has to be on purpose, but it's more like they were trying for a cozy or intimate or restful light instead of glaring? But instead it's oppressive in there. I always just want to get out. The K-Citymarket hypermarket attached to it is our closest Citymarket*, and it's much more brightly lit but still feels looming, oppressive, suffocating, sullen, and unwell. And I honestly do not know why! Maybe it's not actually the light, maybe it's sounds outside the regular hearing range or something?

So I've been thinking for a week whether it's preferable to go to this rancid-vibed mall, 35m by bus + 10-15m walk, or all the way to Turku, 50m by bus + 5-10m walk. The former SHOULD make me feel better because of the walking and fresh air, and I usually prefer less time on the bus because it's less chance to get trapped near someone's perfume; but would the rancid vibes counteract that?

*The other stores vary in vibes, but none of the ones near us are even close to this bad. Citymarkets Kupittaa and Länsikeskus are both reasonably Ok, and Prisma (Citymarket's competitor, the other Finnish grocery chain) Tampereentie is a little worse, while our closest Prisma at Itäharju is mostly nice, with some bad vibes in one end of the supermarket side. The nicest hypermarket near us is Citymarket Ravattula, Littoinen. I like this one so much more that I ALMOST would go to it instead (it's nearly 40 minutes by car, instead of 15 or so to Itäharju).

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