Brainbox busted
Mar. 3rd, 2018 09:30 pmBrainbox update
I'm coming up out of a low, low place, enough that I want to post something. I'm not sure why exactly it happened, or more accurately, there's a number of causes and I'm not sure which one to blame: I stopped amitriptyline and maybe that low dose was doing more than I thought, there was a brief spasm of birthday madness in my family around the date of my lovely sister's birthday (my family does not do birthdays gracefully or well), my therapist went to a seminar so I was a free-range brain for the first six weeks of the year, and my not-lovely sister is getting married which is apparently a family secret that I am not to know but I do because nobody told my father this and he wrote it on the work roster.
Looking back at that list, I'm going to blame my family. (How is keeping a family member's wedding secret from half of us going to even work? I am so confused. Baby sister and I are estranged from her, neither of us have any interest in her wedding, but I don't see how it's functional for my mother to hide the details from me and baby sister. Is she shunning us? Are we meant to feel insulted? What are they going to tell the people who know all of us? What are they going to tell my aunt who is flying in from Canada? I feel like I should make some kind of statement of disavowal or something. IDK, how does estrangement even work? I just want to know what the party line is so I can stick to it and not cause more ruckus.)
Three good things
1. I read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, which was amazing and made me love spiders. I mean, really, I love them now and think they are lovely. And science is lovely, and evolution is lovely, and science fiction is lovely.
It's a stand-alone novel, and part of the story supposes an evolutionary path for spiders on a terraformed planet. Australopithecine-level civilisation! Alchemist spiders! SPACE-GOING SPIDERS. It's really cleverly thought through, and does a lot with the differences that would arise from spiders: they can walk on ceilings, so spatial geometry of their architecture is very different, their technology develops around the concept of silk, they don't have vocal cords so their language is sign-based. It was awesome, and early on I had to google Adrian Tchaikovsky to find out how he wrote science so well. (Answer: zoology/psychology degree.) Part of the reason I clicked with it so hard, I think, is because I'm the kind of person who hangs onto my physiology textbook long after I'd dropped the subject, because I needed it to figure out stuff like how Vulcan haemoglobin would work. So, if you're that kind of person too, you'll probably like the book. Unless spiders are an absolute nope for you. (Whyyyy? They're so great!)
2. On Tuesday
lilacsigil and I had a lovely conversation with her brother and SIL-to be, on speaker phone very early in the morning (they're London-based), while we cuddled in bed with cats. They're getting married in June, and we're not going to be able to make it to the UK for the event, so we called to talk in person instead of chatting, and it was really, really nice.
It was one of those moments in the past few weeks when I've had this weird but pleasant feeling of touching base with planet earth again. The first one was sitting at the kitchen bench while
lilacsigil made coffee about a month ago, and I just felt everything slide into position: I was there, she was there, coffee was there, we were safe and well and in our home which is a good place. It was visceral, like I had landed safely. Like I didn't even realise how far I had drifted from myself for weeks until I metaphorically felt my feet touch the ground again. It was very strange to not feel those wheels of almost-panic going. Anyway, early morning to meet London timezone, very cosy, many cats.
3. Monster of the Week started up again! It's a webcomic rewatch of The X-Files which went on hiatus at the end of S4 while the artist had a baby. It's loving and wry, and I'm glad it's back. The Post-Modern Prometheus episode is drawn in colour! Monster of the Week: Season Five, Episode One.
This reminds me that in one of my posts that never got posted, I uploaded a snippet of chat that was X-Files relevant. Also Exorcist relevant, since I was quoting something from FFA about Tomas and Marcus:
( image and transcript under cut, some mention of feral priests )
Clearing out the linkspam folder
-
the_good_place! They're having a rewatch of S1. Ooh, there's a banner!

Join us at
the_good_place!
-
theexorcistfans, which seems to have a rolling writing challenge.
- Write Every Day is at
ysilme this month. Everyone is welcome.
- Porn Battle anon meme!
pb_anon
- ETA: The Agent Carter fic exchange,
ssrconfidential, is running again! Planning post is here: 2018 SSR Confidential.
- The Bright Sessions podcast got optioned for a YA trilogy: Tor Teen Acquires The Bright Sessions Trilogy by Lauren Shippen.
- Keep your lawns short with this nifty guinea pig lawn mower.
- It's from a few Fridays ago, but stiill: Begin Friday With Swinton in a Tux. (I accept that I have a pretty specific women in suits kink.)
- I found this strangely fascinating. From bored panda: 10+ Times People Accidentally Found Their Doppelgängers In Museums
- From Meet Me At Mikes, a list of Australia charities taking crafty donations, like blankets and softies. Crafting for a cause: ace Australian charity crafting campaigns.
- I share this most years, for people who are inundated with zucchini/summer squash. Which is not us, unfortunately. We had a crappy year for squash, with lots of blossom rot.
lilacsigil did google research, and possibly the soil is low in calcium, so we're putting lime down tomorrow. Anyway, here's my zucchini recipe collection. If it's tagged 'Imadethis', then I've tried it and found it worthy of making more than once.
My zucchini tag on Pinboard
This was the latest effort (with a gifted zucchini from one of the seedlings I started): Meatballs with Tomato and Zucchini
We used all beef and matched volume of zucchini (it was a massive zucchini - that was only half!), halved the parmesan, and we baked them instead of frying, for 30 minutes at about 160 C. They were fantastic.
Onward, onward towards a better brain.
I'm coming up out of a low, low place, enough that I want to post something. I'm not sure why exactly it happened, or more accurately, there's a number of causes and I'm not sure which one to blame: I stopped amitriptyline and maybe that low dose was doing more than I thought, there was a brief spasm of birthday madness in my family around the date of my lovely sister's birthday (my family does not do birthdays gracefully or well), my therapist went to a seminar so I was a free-range brain for the first six weeks of the year, and my not-lovely sister is getting married which is apparently a family secret that I am not to know but I do because nobody told my father this and he wrote it on the work roster.
Looking back at that list, I'm going to blame my family. (How is keeping a family member's wedding secret from half of us going to even work? I am so confused. Baby sister and I are estranged from her, neither of us have any interest in her wedding, but I don't see how it's functional for my mother to hide the details from me and baby sister. Is she shunning us? Are we meant to feel insulted? What are they going to tell the people who know all of us? What are they going to tell my aunt who is flying in from Canada? I feel like I should make some kind of statement of disavowal or something. IDK, how does estrangement even work? I just want to know what the party line is so I can stick to it and not cause more ruckus.)
Three good things
1. I read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, which was amazing and made me love spiders. I mean, really, I love them now and think they are lovely. And science is lovely, and evolution is lovely, and science fiction is lovely.
It's a stand-alone novel, and part of the story supposes an evolutionary path for spiders on a terraformed planet. Australopithecine-level civilisation! Alchemist spiders! SPACE-GOING SPIDERS. It's really cleverly thought through, and does a lot with the differences that would arise from spiders: they can walk on ceilings, so spatial geometry of their architecture is very different, their technology develops around the concept of silk, they don't have vocal cords so their language is sign-based. It was awesome, and early on I had to google Adrian Tchaikovsky to find out how he wrote science so well. (Answer: zoology/psychology degree.) Part of the reason I clicked with it so hard, I think, is because I'm the kind of person who hangs onto my physiology textbook long after I'd dropped the subject, because I needed it to figure out stuff like how Vulcan haemoglobin would work. So, if you're that kind of person too, you'll probably like the book. Unless spiders are an absolute nope for you. (Whyyyy? They're so great!)
2. On Tuesday
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
It was one of those moments in the past few weeks when I've had this weird but pleasant feeling of touching base with planet earth again. The first one was sitting at the kitchen bench while
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
3. Monster of the Week started up again! It's a webcomic rewatch of The X-Files which went on hiatus at the end of S4 while the artist had a baby. It's loving and wry, and I'm glad it's back. The Post-Modern Prometheus episode is drawn in colour! Monster of the Week: Season Five, Episode One.
This reminds me that in one of my posts that never got posted, I uploaded a snippet of chat that was X-Files relevant. Also Exorcist relevant, since I was quoting something from FFA about Tomas and Marcus:
( image and transcript under cut, some mention of feral priests )
Clearing out the linkspam folder
-
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)

![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
-
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
- Write Every Day is at
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
- Porn Battle anon meme!
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
- ETA: The Agent Carter fic exchange,
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
- The Bright Sessions podcast got optioned for a YA trilogy: Tor Teen Acquires The Bright Sessions Trilogy by Lauren Shippen.
- Keep your lawns short with this nifty guinea pig lawn mower.
- It's from a few Fridays ago, but stiill: Begin Friday With Swinton in a Tux. (I accept that I have a pretty specific women in suits kink.)
- I found this strangely fascinating. From bored panda: 10+ Times People Accidentally Found Their Doppelgängers In Museums
- From Meet Me At Mikes, a list of Australia charities taking crafty donations, like blankets and softies. Crafting for a cause: ace Australian charity crafting campaigns.
- I share this most years, for people who are inundated with zucchini/summer squash. Which is not us, unfortunately. We had a crappy year for squash, with lots of blossom rot.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
My zucchini tag on Pinboard
This was the latest effort (with a gifted zucchini from one of the seedlings I started): Meatballs with Tomato and Zucchini
We used all beef and matched volume of zucchini (it was a massive zucchini - that was only half!), halved the parmesan, and we baked them instead of frying, for 30 minutes at about 160 C. They were fantastic.
Onward, onward towards a better brain.