Tuesday

[nightdog_barks]

Warm and uncomfortably steamy -- 89 degrees (31.7 Celsius), feels as if it's 97. At least slept a bit better -- took a couple of ibuprofen and that seemed to help a lot.

Many things to do today. Mr. N is off to Atlanta this weekend. Finished reading Pearl Buck in China and am about to start The Coroner's Lunch, by Colin Cotterill. Set in 1970s Laos, the protagonist is a doctor/coroner detective named Siri Paiboun.

More news and speculation has surfaced about the so-called Crosby-Garrett Roman parade helmet -- namely, that it may not have been found in Britain after all. There are many unanswered questions, laid out in this fascinating blog entry by archaeologist Paul Barford (via The History Blog). Interesting stuff!

Comments

[hannah]

A combination of lingering congestion, some Advil PM, plus Benadryl equaled me sleeping until eleven. I'm going to have some coffee before heading out to do a bit of job work.

In terms of reading, I'm about done with Raymond Carver's Fires - I love how precise he is with his visions.

[nightdog_barks]

Raymond Carver was a genius. I still remember What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, although time has dimmed all the details but the title. *g* And then, of course, the huge controversy emerged about his editor, Gordon Lish, and how much influence he'd really had on Carver's stories, and it all became very tangled indeed.

[hannah]

One thing I like about this collection are the essays he wrote about the nature of writing short stories, and the craft of writing in general. There's a couple of great anecdotes about how outside influences affect works in progress, like being called by someone asking for a person who wasn't there, and Carver writing in a person with the asked-for name into the story because he realized that person needed to be in the story. I know I'm not the only person who writes something and then realizes of course that had to be there, but seeing someone else describe that moment of discovery rang very true.

[perspi]

Hi Nightdog hello!

I'm done with class for the day, and thankfully I have no meetings this afternoon, so! I'm eating lunch and thinking about how to best spend the afternoon. :)

[blackmare]

I have to go paint. With, like, rollers and brushes and such.

*hugs*

Good to see you before I run off, though!

[perspi]

Oh, I love painting! With rollers and brushes and stuff. :)

Good to see you, too! *snorfles you to send you on your way*

[nightdog_barks]

Hi Perspi!

I've just finished paying some bills and renewing our Sierra Club membership (elitist liberal tree-huggers that we are, ha) and stuffing an envelope to some right-wing organization FULL OF JUNK so they have to pay extra return postage. Now I need to do all the other stuff I need to do.

[pwcorgigirl]

Hehee! I do that too! Usually once it all it takes to stop them.

"The Coroner's Lunch" is a terrific book. I was slightly less impressed with the sequel, "Thirty-three Teeth," but will continue with the series because the character is so awesome.

The dishwasher repair guys FINALLY showed up. My buddy J., who runs the kitchen, happened to be here (he usually works on Wednesdays), and he's over dealing with them.

[nightdog_barks]

HA! Yep, we get these mailings because we live in an overwhelmingly Republican neighborhood in an overwhelmingly Republican district in an overwhelmingly Republican state (although there's the barest chance we'll elect a Democratic governor this year). They're usually fake surveys that all ask the same question -- DO YOU BELIEVE NANCY PELOSI AND HER SOCIALIST ALLIES ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY WITH THEIR CHEESE-EATING EUROPEAN WAYS? Oy. I've heard of some folks sending the return envelope back taped to a brick, but I'm not quite that brave.

I'm glad to hear The Coroner's Lunch is a good read! Now I'm really looking forward to it!

I've just refilled the bird feeders and scattered some "critter crunch" (Chango helped with both tasks). It's still steamy and close outside. Bleh.

[taiga13]

That is a fantastic idea! I just throw them away, I wonder if I can do that? What I'd really like is to stop delivery on all those fliers from stores.

[nightdog_barks]

*g*

All I do is open up our other junk mail -- stuff from charities, credit-card offers, etc., and jam as much of it as I can into the postage-paid return envelope from the right-wingers. I don't put in ANYTHING with our name on it, but everything else -- charity appeals, the little terms-and-conditions folders from credit-card offers, pamphlets and fliers from wildlife groups and other political organizations -- it's all fair game. If the right-wingers want to send me crap that insults my intelligence then they can damn well pay the price of me sending it back. *g*

[abject_reptile]

Skulduggery! As one of the bods from the BM said, it's a shame that it wasn't examined before it was partly restored -- and one has to wonder why -- but one would think that evidence from the site will quickly prove or disprove the supposed provenance. At this point, the senior curator of Romano-British Collections says that he has no reason to doubt that it's from Crosby Garrett.