Found Objects

…only not just now. But I was carrying the old laptop I was using (which used to be Secunda’s, and my other half’s before that, and his employer’s before that, an ancient but still serviceable little Gateway) up the stairs because I’d just copied some files on to it —no network reception on the roof terrace with the almost equally ancient wireless card— when I slipped and had to let go of one corner to keep myself from pitching down, and that corner banged on the top step.

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Midsummer 2008, about 10 pm, looking west from our roof terrace. After a while the gold went away and it became spectacular greyscale, but I don’t think the poor little Praktica could have caught that and I didn’t think of borrowing Boudewijn’s much better camera.

The bats that live in our roof must hate June: it stays light so long that they can’t go outside until the swifts have eaten all the insects.

As a long-time fan of the book by Diana Wynne Jones I was very wary of the Miyazaki film. I’d never liked anime —correction, I’d never seen anime I liked— and though, according to Prima who’s been watching some anime lately, this film is not at all typical, the characters still had the huge eyes and little pursed mouths that I associate with anime I don’t like. But the friendly DVD merchant around the corner, who knows our tastes, was certain we’d like it. I’d heard a lot of good things about it on the Diana Wynne Jones mailing list too: that DWJ herself liked it a lot, for one.

Warning: the rest may contain mild spoilers.

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Was this really only one day? I think yes, though we slept for a few hours in the middle of it. It did end around midnight— the in-world day, that is, we ended neatly at 10:50.

Unresolved questions: what on earth was Selle’s message? It must have been important. And who was it that called Athal “priest of Timoine, Anshen and Mizran”? Sounds like the merchant-guild sisters, but I’m not sure.

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Last night, while we were immersed in roleplaying, our ADSL connection stopped connecting. The girls noticed, but thought it was a dip of the kind we’ve been having all too frequently and it would be up again within minutes, but they were going to bed anyway so they didn’t try, or think of telling us. We didn’t notice until the other player had gone home and we wanted to wind down, check mail, talk to people on the other side of the world, and in my case make a start on writing the writeup. My other half tried to fix it, but it wasn’t one of the simple things (rcnetwork restart, try to ping, OK, works) so he said he’d try again in the morning and for all he knew it would be up again then.

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I had to keep Athal from commenting between the lines. Let one thing be clear: I don’t know if it had any actual effect that Raisse came to Athal’s aid, but even if it didn’t he’s glad she did, and so am I!

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So how would you feel if for years you’d been in the habit of doing something you thought was a good thing, absolutely saw the sense of, took pains to do right, taught your children to do, put up with discomfort in order to do…

… and then suddenly you’re told that you don’t have to do it any more, and not only that (so you could at least feel virtuous for keeping it up regardless) but it’s made impossible?

No, I’m not talking about the outdated practice of covering one’s head in church. I’m talking about the outdated practice of separating household waste into organic and miscellaneous. Which was the spiffy new thing, let’s see, a few decades ago.

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They were so good that we ran out almost immediately, and I had some strawberries left (the other ingredients are what I’m always stocked up on, anyway) so I made another lot.

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I was going to bake cupcakes. I had a lot of fresh strawberries.

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It’s not only a neat little city for the tourists. The moment we left the centre —first to go to church in a neighbourhood just outside it, later to walk to the Dampoort station to catch a train— we saw many more houses that were tumbledown, badly kept, neglected, than the occasional one in the centre. The point seems to be that if it’s not touristic, it’s not worth keeping up. I have a suspicion that St. Michael’s church, for instance, is kept poor by its obscurity: it’s not one of the Big Sights, though <plug> if you like churches it’s perhaps even better </plug>, much more churchy.

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In this unassuming clumsily-restored medieval hall lie the deepest roots of Valdyas.

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This is the sky over our roof terrace around 17:30 today. It’s now almost 22:00 and still not thundering, though it’s been getting steadily more oppressive since mid-day.