imhilien

Well, Happy Midwinter to those of us in the southern hemisphere. It was freezing last night as it went down to 5 deg C / 40 deg F. I'm a summer person and struggle with cold like that. At least the weather is fine - last week it was wild and stormy.

Sunsets (and sunrises too, apparently) have a lot of bright pink in them these days, that's apparently due to the aftereffects of the underwater volcanic eruption in Tonga a while back. I'm old enough to remember years ago after Mt Pinatubo (sp?) erupted in the Phillipines, we had primary-colour sunsets for months afterward.

My local theater in conjunction with others recently had a French Film festival, so I looked at the catalogue and decided to go to 'Murder Party', which was loosely based on the game of Cluedo. There was a reasonable crowd and most of us were masked, so that was good (my city still has thousands of cases each day so I'm always careful when leaving the house). It was entertaining enough and there was a plot twist I didn't see coming, so that was ok.

I recently watched the two seasons of 'Bridgerton' after each other, I had found S1 a bit boring in places but I adored S2.

Library books and tea are keeping me going right now. I go for walks when I can and I have a cross stitch project I'm working on.

So last week Auckland was under a Level 3 Covid lockdown again; which meant stay inside and avoid people outside of your household bubble as much as you could. One of my coping mechanisms was uh, binge-watching 'She-Ra and the Princesses of Power' which was actually quite good. Nice blend of fantasy and sci-fi. Coping mostly achieved!

Then on Friday, the North Island had two tsunami alerts because of two big earthquakes off the coast. People where I were received warnings to stay away from the water. Nothing too alarming happened though, up in Northland it was reported that the tide was doing the opposite of what it should be doing, but that was really all.

We're back down to a kinder Level 2 lockdown where you can leave your house, but be sensible, etc.

However, signs of autumn are now starting to appear. There's always something!

Well, although New Zealand has mostly squished Covid-19, there was a bit of a scare recently when two people were let into the country on compassionate grounds from abroad going down south and it turns out they were infected and hadn't been tested properly. That was an anxiety episode I didn't need that day. Testing at the border has been tightened up apparently and that's where any new cases are picked up these days (they then have to go into quarantine).

I still wear a face mask if I'm going on public transport for a decent length of time and try and keep some distance from people. My book club has started up again, so that's good. Art group is back on, though they clean the place to the nth degree at the moment and make sure hand sanitizer is on each table, which is OK. My board gaming group has started up again, though I haven't been back yet as it's at night with not much ventilation, lots of strangers etc, so I'm still a bit cautious about returning.

I went to the movie 'The Booksellers' the other day with a friend, which was good. It was about the rare book scene in New York (pre-Covid, of course). Was good to see a few book shops came with resident cat. :)

It's definitely winter here now, when I wake in the morning and it's below 5 degrees (40 F) I Do Not Like. About a week ago there were tornadoes in our region that sent a few trampolines flying here and there, ouch.

Still hunting for a new part-time admin job, a process made much harder of course now in these interesting times. Still, some of the job web sites are starting to list jobs again.

Season 5 (part 1) of 'Lucifer' is turning up in August, yay. I do want to see new adventures of my Chaotic Dumba** babies. Two new seconds of S5 footage were made available and the fandom went crazy, LOL.

Here are some fic recs set in the mid-90's when Windows 95 was released (I remember!). However, this version is an Eldritch Horror that wants to be Your Only Friend. 

1. Welcome to Windows 95!
Done entirely in realistic (and creepy) screenshots.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/24073393

2. Re: Windows 95
People talk about their experiences with Windows 95 (Eldritch Horror version) on a mailing list. Things get creepy.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/24853906

June has started and with it, winter (brr). When the weather drops below 15 degrees (60 F), I don't like it at all. It's back to hats, scarfs and gloves.  At least today is a lovely fine day, though icy in the shade. Saturday was quite stormy, I was out and saw two different rainbows in the morning alone.

I'm planning to go to the 'Tolkien' movie with a friend when it comes out soon, it sounds good.

I went to a board gaming evening last week, one of the games we played was a fantasy-Victorian variation of Cluedo, great fun.

I've heard that 'Good Omens' came out last weekend; I don't get Amazon Prime so hopefully my local library will get the DVD version.  I recently rented the DVD of 'A Discovery of Witches', which was nice if slightly gorey (which I was expecting). It's set in Oxford so lots of lovely library pr0n. :D

When the night is clear, at the moment I can see the Orion constellation on its side in the west, while the Southern Cross is in the eastern sky. :)

Last Thursday was the autumn equinox and the morning started with a heavy, damp fog that had rolled in. Fortunately by late morning it had gone and it became a nice hot day. It's been like that ever since, although there is some stormy weather on the way later this week. Mornings and evenings are getting darker more quickly though.

I went to see 'Captain America' recently to cheer myself up and enjoyed it. It was set in the '90's and I liked how it poked gentle fun at '90's things such as video stores, boxy computers with stone age internet (and how long it takes to download stuff) and pagers.

Some links:

An Incel's life turns around when he gets some pet shrimp

https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelTears/comments/b4phgp/love_it_how_his_life_became_better_when_he_quit/


A poem - 'I got told what to call this poem by my male colleague"

https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/rsrc/2019/03/08/i-got-told-what-to-call-this-poem-by-my-male-colleague/

Best part:

A special thank you to my dissertation advisor
Who, when I told him what I wanted to write about,
Told me about his son’s last holiday abroad
And how his son had told him something interesting
Vaguely related
To my interests
And wouldn’t that be a more interesting topic to write about?

Brr, it's definitely winter now. Snow has been marching up the country and you can smell the ice in the air. It was 10 degrees today (50 deg F) and Did Not Like. Heat is fine, cold not so much for me.

I was outside the bookshop near work and smiled when I saw it had a nice geeky window display with Harry Potter and Star Wars books, bless. I saw there were some pencils with slogans on them, so I went in and bought two that said, 'Weird and Proud' and 'Knitters Gonna Knit'. Mwaha.

The new painting I'm working on is a photo of a still life of a bowl of green limes, which I'm enjoying doing. I'm also working on knitting a shawl with a geometric design - I can see it will take me a while, and the instructions look like calculus (which I never took), but I'm determined to get there.