Fellow Explorers

Cat Herding: Our beloved Jinksy!bear turned twelve on Saturday. Twelve! He's (by a margin of a good few years) the second-oldest cat I've ever had, and continues to be just the sweetest, softest boy. May he be with us in good health for years to come.

It was also Claudia's birthday, of course, and I always think of her on their birthday. Oh, my darling baby cat.

*The oldest was Jenny, the cat of my childhood who was still with my parents for years after I moved out. She made it to nineteen, most of that time in rock-solid health, and never really forgave me for moving to Toronto and thus straight-up vanishing from her life for months at a time.

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Reading: I finished reading Jennifer 8 Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, which remained an interesting read right through, and read Adrian Tchaikovsky's City of Last Chances, which I think is only the second thing of his I've read? (Elder Race is the other one I'm sure of.) Having finished it, I'm in a position that's annoyingly familiar, where I liked the book quite a bit and am curious about what happens next, but am not sure I cared enough that I'll ever actually get around to picking up the sequel.

(The thing where I've almost entirely been reading books I own for years now doesn't really help, where I've often picked up the first book of a trilogy of series or whatever on sale in ebook because I've heard it's good, and then am not sure I'm invested enough to pay full price on the next one when I own literally hundreds of yet-unread books. Feh.)

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Watching: scruloose and I are up to date on Murderbot and have seen the first episode of Kingdom season 2.

In the case of the former, I'm skeptical about the nqqvgvba bs n punenpgre jub qbrfa'g nccrne va gur obbxf ng nyy--juvpu V'z abg vaureragyl ntnvafg, tvira gung gur fubj vf pyrneyl vgf bja guvat, naq V'z thrffvat fur'f gurer gb pbairl fbzrguvat gung jbhyq'ir orra gevpxl gb qb gur fnzr jnl va guvf sbezng nf va gur abiryyn. Ohg fur'f naablvat, naq V'yy cebonoyl xrrc svaqvat ure naablvat jurgure fur vf va snpg freivat jung V pheeragyl guvax vf ure cebonoyr shapgvba (rarzl ntrag znfdhrenqvat nf nyyl) be fbzrguvat zber vagrerfgvat. [ROT13] Guess we'll find out soon!

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Working: Thank goodness the manga I'm working right now is (as usual) a fairly easy rewrite and not a tight deadline, because scrounging the mental energy for freelance work has been frustratingly hard recently. I'm almost halfway through my draft and have about a week and a half left with it, so it's fine, but. :/

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Weathering/Householding: We've had a lot of gray days and some high-ish temperatures combined with humidity (which I hate), and the air quality, while not remotely as bad as it is in a lot of places, has been fluctuating significantly...and the AC function of the heat pumps is essentially nonfunctional. >.< This is crappy timing, given how much of the time over the last several days has required having the windows closed (and the air purifiers running for good measure, although they don't address some of the nastiness from wildfire smoke). And for bonus fun, while the heat pumps are still under warranty, the company we bought them from went under a few months ago, which complicates things. (I think possibly the main person died. :/)

That said, scruloose made a bunch of calls today and we have reason to hope that someone can come in and take a look at them soon, if that particular company has the parts in stock. And while it's been uncomfortably warm inside some of the time because of this, at least it's not full summer yet. Hopefully we can get things dealt with by the time summer heat arrives in earnest.

And on a purely pleasant note, a couple nights ago we were in a phase of "somehow the air quality is fine outside right now, so we can just open the windows and run fans" while it was pleasantly cool and raining atmospherically and the wind was doing a wonderful job of wafting the smell of the lilacs into the living room.