BookWoman56

I still read Charlaine Harris and really am enjoying her newest series. I liked the first two Midnight, Texas books but was meh on the third one, which I am pretty sure was the final book of the series. I enjoyed most of the Sookie Stackhouse books until the last few, when it became obvious the publisher was pushing her to extend the series and she was mostly just going through the motions. She seems to do much better with a shorter series, rather than the longer ones. That said, all the series have had a few characters who interest me. I think writing is her own personal therapy; she confirmed at one point that she had been raped when she was younger. The Lily Bard series definitely has some insight into dealing with the aftermath of rape. I bailed on Joanna Fluke when the back and forth between romantic interests got tedious.

I’ve gotten so fed up with the ongoing issues of entire families going to the grocery store together and blocking aisles while they debate which brand of cereal to get that I have altered my shopping process. I hated maneuvering around families or other large groups in the store pre-pandemic. It got better for a while, but now that our state has lifted mask requirements, people are being more stupid than normal. The store still requires masks, but the large families are out in force again. And I can no longer fucking tolerate having to walk past 6-7 people to get peanut butter, or else wait 10 minutes for them to move on to their next debate over the merits of Brand A versus Brand B. My grocery store offers curbside pickup for $4.95. So, for less than five dollars, someone else deals with collecting the items on my list. I can allow or disallow substitutes for each item, and add a note if necessary for each item. I set up a pickup time and go to the designated pickup parking lot, text my parking spot number to them, and they put the groceries in my car. At this point, not having to deal with other people in the store is well worth five bucks. They pick out produce that I would select myself, and no problems with the orders. I am kicking myself for not having started doing this regularly months ago.

I am always horrified by those rape cases in which a high school or college female student becomes intoxicated, one or more males decide it’s perfectly okay to rape her because she’s drunk, and the judge and rapist’s family bitch and moan about how a conviction will destroy the guy’s life. Sometimes the community at large and even the victim’s family will sympathize with the rapist, provided he’s a white middle or upper class young male. They act as if getting drunk somehow explicitly grants permission to any random guy to assault the female. Fuck that shit. How much sympathy would there be for the rapist if the victim were a white male athlete and the rapist were a gay male? Would we be hearing the same pleas to not destroy the rapist’s life with a conviction, when everyone knows getting drunk at a party means you’re just asking for something bad to happen? I think not. IMO, what it comes down to is this: The lives of white middle and upper class straight males are still considered to be much more valuable than the lives of any females or any poor, gay, and/or nonwhite male.

I had learned about his death earlier today from a friend, who wrote a biography of Darrow. They had a chance meeting and from that, she worked with him to write about his life. She has only good things to say about him; he was apparently extremely nice.

There’s a situation with extended family that annoys me, while not affecting me in any significant way, so maybe I am just in a bitchy mood. My nephew and his wife have 2 kids, one who is 10 and has autism, and another who is 5-6 and neurotypical. I’ve seen the online horror stories of parents who focus their energy on the neurodivergent child almost exclusively to the point that they ignore/neglect the other child or in some cases, as the kids get older, turn the neurotypical child into essentially a caregiver for the neurodivergent child. But what’s happening is instead sort of going overboard to make the neurotypical child feel that she also needs and deserves special attention. For example, the mother will post on social media about the neurodivergent child maybe once every couple of weeks, usually to mention progress in school or some other goal being achieved. These posts generally contain photos or videos, along with comments about how x number of years ago, she never thought this child would achieve XYZ. OTOH, the mother posts almost every damn day about the neurotypical child and her latest “accomplishment,” such as dancing to a song, being dressed in an outfit she chose herself, and so forth. The comments are OTT praise for whatever the child did. It’s glaringly obvious that this child is the mother’s favorite. This child also has her own room, in addition to her bedroom, just for her collection of stuffed animals. I don’t feel in any way that the needs of the neurodivergent child are being ignored. He is in a program suitable for him, and both parents are supportive of him. It’s just that the mother has seriously overcompensated when it comes to the neurotypical child. My late sister, the grandmother of these kids, had raised some concerns about how obsessed the mother was about catering to every whim the neurotypical child has, and the mother stated that she had to ensure the neurotypical child didn’t feel neglected. I fully understand the need to make sure both kids are getting enough attention. But there’s a difference between doing that and showering one kid with so many toys that an entire extra room is needed to store them, and bragging online about every routine thing this kid does versus minimal online comments about major milestones being reached by the other child. I also think some of the differences are due to gender and upbringing. The mother grew up in extreme poverty and IMO uses retail therapy to make herself feel better. The neurodivergent child is male; the neurotypical child is female. So I suspect some of the behavior the mother exhibits is her trying to give her daughter all the attention and physical possessions she never had herself when growing up. Unfortunately, what I envision is this kid growing up with a huge sense of entitlement, thinking that of course everyone is supposed to be amazed by even the most mundane things she does, and she’s always supposed to get a huge number of presents for every birthday and holiday. I know better than to say anything to the mother, and in general feel like it’s not my business how they raise their children. But if my nephew ever asks for advice on the kids, then I will try to point out the potential for problems down the road.

If you are still wanting the book, try the abebooks website www.abebooks.com. It’s primarily booksellers who either have brick and mortar bookstores or online bookstores. When I was selling collectible books several years ago, I sold through that site. I can’t guarantee anything on the price there for a specific book, but there’s generally a wider range of prices, depending on condition of the book, availability, and special characteristics (signed first edition, limited run, etc.). I have to wonder why a paperback would be listed at that price; it might be the seller on Amazon thinks because it’s hard to find, that someone will pay an outrageous price for it. Occasionally people will charge ridiculous prices for books that are out of print but aren’t remarkable in any other way, but I strongly recommend widening your search beyond Amazon.

I have blocked some extended family members and acquaintances who kept posting political/religious stuff I disagreed with, when I realized the vast majority of their posts were on those topics. I am connected with my siblings on FB, except for my younger sister. With her, I simply never accepted her friend request, which was sent a few years back while my mother was still alive. I didn’t want this sister to see my posts expressing my political views or any mention of my sexual orientation, because I didn’t want her upsetting my mother by telling her that I’m a pansexual atheist, given my mother’s dementia and inability to process things that went against her belief system. Not that I post a lot on FB, but I simply wanted certain aspects of my life to be private, at least as far as this sister was concerned. Ironically, this sister is now living with me because of covid, and now that my mother is dead, I have had the blunt discussion with her on these topics and informed her I don’t give a flying fuck about what her own beliefs are, as long as she doesn’t try to force her beliefs on me. I regard FB as a tool that helps me keep up with some friends and family, and that also provides some content I find interesting, such as vintage china, gardens, and so forth. But if FB disappeared tomorrow, there would be minimal impact on my life.

I hate fish so smelling nuked fish would make me queasy. However, when I have a migraine coming on, one signal for it is the smell of burnt popcorn. So if there was legit burnt popcorn, I would assume a migraine was about to hit. Overall, not having to deal with these two microwave odors is probably in my top 20 reasons I’ve worked from home for the last 5 or so years.

I think that’s one of the fundamental differences in how men and women are treated in the workplace. For a male to be told he”s not approachable, his behavior has to be egregious. For a female, it’s everything from her normal facial expression to the way she dresses to not being an extrovert. That is, for men it’s more objective criteria and specific behavior they can change, whereas for women it’s often subjective criteria based on appearance or behavior they shouldn’t need to modify. Very early in my career I was told that I didn’t seem “friendly” enough, in the opinion of a senior executive. I modified my behavior by forcing myself to engage in small talk in my subsequent interactions with her. I still resent that feedback, because my actual job performance was extremely high, based on objective criteria, none of which had anything to do with chatting with executives. I will admit that in certain circumstances, it’s useful to be sociable with colleagues and clients, but these days I sometimes engage in social chat with colleagues primarily as a conscious choice of a tactic to build rapport. I seriously have a reminder on my work calendar to do so with a specific colleague who values small talk. In the corporate world, I have never heard criticism of a male for not being friendly; it’s usually been that a specific male is arrogant, short-tempered, or condescending.

Although it annoys me to no end that women are told to smile more so as to seem friendlier, I have seen firsthand a male head of department be told that most people in the department found him unapproachable and that his behavior needed to change if he wanted a productive relationship with the people in the department. That said, this was in academia. The male was a new department head hired from the outside. He arrived and decided the regular department head office wasn’t big enough for him and took over the faculty lounge as his own office. He then implemented a closed door policy, meaning he kept his office door shut and anyone wanting to see him had to make an appointment. These actions did not exactly endear him to the faculty of the department, who had previously used the faculty lounge to socialize or for small meetings, and had always been able to drop in to the department head’s office to chat informally (the door would be closed only for private meetings or for short stretches of critical work). A few of them attempted to suggest that most of the faculty were unhappy with these changes, but he made it clear that he didn’t care what they thought. Some of the more senior faculty went to the dean, who then informed the department head that he was perceived as unapproachable and needed to make some changes unless he wanted the entire department to try to force him out. I absolutely agree that women receive pushback on their approachability much more than men do and are far too often told to smile to make themselves more approachable or attractive. But occasionally males will get similar feedback, albeit not generally being told to just smile more.

Thank goodness my work discourages video meetings. We mostly use Skype for business, so you dial into a conference call and the presenter can share a PPT presentation, Word docs, or whatever without everyone being on video. Unless I am the meeting facilitator, I don’t hesitate to take a bio break or go make a cup of tea, or just walk around a few minutes. I keep my phone on mute most of the time, and adjust my activities if it’s a general meeting with a lot of attendees versus a small meeting in which people may have questions for me or I may need to comment on something. I think at least 50% of those general meetings could be replaced by an email. Almost always after those big meetings, they send out the presentation deck and often have a video replay of the meeting available. For me the only value for having the big meetings is having a Q&A part at the end, because attendees will occasionally raise questions of interest.

@Blergh, I‘ve encountered people like that, where it doesn’t matter who originally made a statement or announcement; it’s not “official” until this person repeats the message. Even more than that, though, there are way the hell too many people who apparently love the sound of their own voice so much that it takes them forever to just shut up. Invariably when everyone else is ready for a meeting to end or ready to move on to the next agenda item, this person will ask a gazillion questions that are extremely tangential to the topic and could better be addressed via email, or if not asking questions, just start throwing unsolicited opinions and advice right and left. I wish one could simply say, “could you please just STFU?” but apparently that’s too rude. Occasionally I will suggest that in the interest of time, we need to move on to the next agenda item. Thank goodness these are online meetings only, so I don’t have to worry someone else is going to spot me rolling my eyes or worse.

Nudity doesn’t bother me; in many societies it’s not a big deal. That said, I thought the nudity in this episode was largely symbolic. The orgy participants were nude, and vulnerable to Yen’s manipulation. In the bathtub scene, Yen is nude and Geralt shows insight into her background and character. Geralt, while also naked, is also partially covered by the bath water; he’s somewhat vulnerable to Yen but she doesn’t discern much about his character other than he does consider the bard a friend. Clothing is usually part of the persona we present to others, and its absence generally indicates that the character is showing more of his or her true self than usual, whether the nudity is voluntary or forced. The only thing that truly bothered me about this episode was the actor who was selling Yen the supposed treatments for her infertility. Intentionally or not, he sounded exactly like he was doing an impersonation of Alan Rickman’s voice. I can’t watch this episode again without thinking of him as Not!AlanRickman.

I don’t have much to contribute about ideas for creating and running a small business, other than my own very limited experience about 20 years ago. I ran an online bookstore, selling some collectibles but mostly just titles that might be out of print or hard to find in brick and mortar bookstores that are obviously more focused on new releases and reliable/established titles. I went into this with far too little capital to support myself while I was building my inventory and sales. I did enjoy the absolute freedom it gave me over my schedule, but I realized fairly soon that I couldn’t support my daughter and myself on the earnings. It would have been a nice little sideline if I had a day job, but it wasn’t generating enough steady income. I was just at the point of considering leasing a small space for a brick and mortar used bookstore, offering a small reading area with coffee, tea, and treats, when I got a job offer that came with way more money and professional growth opportunities, so I shut down the online business and liquidated my stock. Prior to that, I tried doing both the new day job and doing the online business in the evenings, but was exhausted all the damn time. I still daydream at times about doing a brick and mortar used bookstore after I retire from my current job. The idea of having a bookstore where a few people can come in and read for a bit while having a nice cup of tea and some scones is incredibly attractive to me. But it’s a romanticized idea in my head that most likely will have little connection to the reality of running a small business, no matter how much I love books and reading.

The temperature inside my house is currently 55 degrees, while the recommended temperature for a fridge is 37-40 degrees. We salvaged what we could to grill, but some items (deli meats and cheeses, etc.) have a definite “off” smell and some other items that probably technically haven’t gone bad still smell weird. When it comes to keeping food at the right temperature, I prefer not to take any chances, although I will keep things like various barbecue sauces. We were advised not to stick food outside on the patio or whatever, although I don’t remember the rationale for that. This may be paranoia on my part, but my house is close to the edge of my neighborhood, and there is wooded, undeveloped land adjacent. The coyotes are quite active there, and I don’t want to leave stuff outside that would attract smaller wildlife and possibly in turn attract the coyotes or feral hogs. I can easily replace the food that went bad, and I fully recognize how lucky I am to be able to afford to do so. My biggest regret on the food that has gone bad is that in preparation for the cold weather, I had made a large batch of taco soup. I am also much more used to power outages in hot weather, but at least for me, dealing with the low temperatures and trying to stay warm has left me extremely fatigued on top of what I hope is just regular flu. So, no energy to deal with more aggressively using or storing food. A lot of the roads are closed, closest convenience stores that normally would have ice are closed with no power, and the grocery stores have limited their hours and have very limited stock. Fortunately I keep a lot of non perishable items on hand and have plenty of fresh fruit as well. By Saturday my power should be restored, but the local power company has said it may be Monday for some people. ETA: The only cooler I have holds maybe 6 cans of soda, not much help there anyway. WalMart and similar places are mostly sold out of coolers, camp stoves, etc.

Hell, I regard French fries as a ketchup delivery system.

Without getting into too much of a rant, the difference is that TX has its own separate power grid, not connected to other states. It is privatized and deregulated, and they made a conscious choice some time back to ignore recommendations from the feds on precautions to deal with extreme cold. So the pipes that carry fuel for the power grid are not buried as deep as they should be, and as they are in other states subject to federal regulations. The wind turbines supply a fairly small percentage of total energy here, but they also are not required to meet certain extreme weather standards. I am now on day 3 of no power, and the latest rumor is that we might have power by Friday. This is not just down to consumers failing to adjust their thermostats; it’s what happens when TPTB fail to plan for scenarios that were widely predicted and cut corners to increase their profits. Meanwhile, I am huddled up with 3 blankets. The food in my fridge has gone bad; salvaging some frozen stuff for my son to grill. I am seriously considering buying a generator, which will not arrive in time for this storm but would be here for the next one. Overall not happy with the situation.

Very new pet peeve caused by the last couple of days: Being without power for two days during a winter storm. I am in San Antonio, and we got snow Sunday night. The power went off and on again that night but went out and stayed out starting around 9am. It came back on around 4:30 am today, but only for an hour and nothing since. I’ve been charging my phone in the car. I know there are news stories about this complete clusterfuck, but this to me isn’t some kind of controlled rolling blackouts. It’s absolute chaos, and the date for a return to normal seems to be a moving target. The temperature inside my house was 56 degrees yesterday. I am cool with the occasional 2-3 hour power outage after bad thunderstorms, but this is crazy.

That’s great news, @bilgistic.

I have fond memories of Lexx, especially Kai and his hairdo, aka “the beehive of impending doom,” I believe.

Last year was not great for the financial services industry in general. I had resigned myself to getting a meets expectations performance rating, a decent but not great bonus, and a decent but not great raise. Instead I got the highest possible performance rating, a much higher bonus than expected, and not only a higher than expected raise but also a salary adjustment from HR, who decided I wasn’t at the correct point in my salary range. The salary adjustment essentially doubled my raise. Color me a little surprised. I have almost always been a very strong performer in the workplace, but I wasn’t really feeling that my work last year was significantly better than the previous year. Maybe the difference is that year before last, I was having to deal with my mother’s quickly declining health and then death, whereas for most of last year, I was able to focus on work. In any event, I am seriously happy about the larger than expected bonus, which allowed me to finish paying off some medical debts sooner than anticipated. It’s just funny to me how often our own perceptions of our work don’t match what others perceive. This is not the first time I’ve gotten a much higher rating than expected, but there have also been years in previous jobs when I felt like I deserved an award and my manager was sort of like, Oh, your work was fine but we need to give the award to someone who has shown a lot of improvement. Work itself hasn’t changed much other than an influx of new executives, some of whom have the mindset of not wanting to understand how things work before they want to make drastic changes just for the sake of change and putting their own stamp on things. Why not take the time to understand how and why things work the way they currently do before trying to “improve” things?

Vanity presses are just that — a publisher who prints books because the author’s vanity is much bigger than his/her writing ability and the appeal of the subject. Given the ease with which someone can self-publish on Amazon or similar platforms, it makes no damn sense to print a book when you have no real audience. For what it’s worth, I will be doing a very small scale publishing project soon but I already know my audience and need less than a dozen copies. My mother left a few handwritten cookbooks she had compiled, and I plan to have them copied/digitized into one cookbook, and have them printed and spiral bound at a FedEx/office center. I sure as hell am not going to pay an insane amount of money to have them professionally printed and bound, when the plan is to provide just enough copies for a few family members.

Your post took me back in time to when I was in grad school and in a relationship with a professor (completely different departments, English literature versus sociology) who had done his doctoral research in Indonesia. He of course had to learn the language, and he mentioned that in Indonesian, a double noun generally indicates a plural or “all of the [noun].” For example, “cat cat” could mean “cats” or “all of the cats” depending on context. My pet peeve around language for babies and toddlers is adults who use “baby talk” when speaking to babies/toddlers. You’re teaching them the wrong words or wrong pronunciation, which means they will then have to learn the correct words/pronunciation when they are a little older. Why make acquiring a decent vocabulary any harder than it has to be?

I think you’re absolutely right. Not sure if this was about the same woman who died, but Miss Marple described her as someone who would show up with a caraway seed cake to welcome new neighbors, completely oblivious to the fact that many people can’t stand the taste of caraway seeds. On the topic of wedding gifts, I feel that either a nice wedding present or shower gift is fine, but I would never feel compelled to buy both. I fail to understand the mindset of people who spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on weddings, when that money could be used for a down payment on a house or as an emergency fund. Some of the wedding stories I have seen online horrify me; let’s just say that anyone who informs me that a gift that costs less than $400 is unacceptable will not be receiving a gift at all. Back when I got married the first time, there were gifts from a few elderly family members on fixed incomes, and I understood that their inexpensive gifts were just as meaningful as more expensive gifts from others, if not more so because they had very limited funds and yet chose to send a gift. I can’t imagine feeling so entitled as to set a threshold of how much a gift must have cost to be willing to accept it.

These people are the modern equivalent of a character Agatha Christie described in one of her mysteries. I no longer remember the exact words, but it was something to the effect of a woman who would loudly tell her friend, while someplace like a grocery store, that she had certain valuables in her house but is planning on being away for a few days, all while in hearing range of the local petty thief. IIRC, the narrator commented that this character might easily end up dead because she returned early from her planned trip and interrupted the thief robbing her house. I have a niece by marriage who is equally idiotic about posting invitations to robbery. “We just got a new smart TV plus other big ticket items, and we’re also going on vacation starting this Saturday.” One day she’s going to come back to a robbed house or walk in on a burglary.