Math
😐
I continued my prealgebra review. I was juggling work and naps for most of the week, so I was only able to squeeze math in on the weekend, but I was pleased at how quickly the note-taking went. I should be able to finish that this week, enter the flashcards, and get back to algebra.
Health
😐
I’m waiting on some test results. My doctor put me on prednisone as a temporary measure, which calmed down my intestines, and I felt much better, like my mind had been let out of a cage. We’ll see how long that lasts. Meanwhile I’m still having my next infusion on Monday, which may or may not do anything, and at some point the test results will tell us what changes to make.
Fiction
🙂
I listened to Come Join Us by the Fire, a free anthology introducing Tor’s horror imprint Nightfire. When I’m in a gloomy mood, I find that creepy stories are less demanding on my emotions than cheery ones, yet their creativity still lends me some energy. The collection’s narrators were very good, and many of the stories stood out to me.
At least a couple of the authors I want to explore further. One is Brian Evenson, whose story, “Black Bark,” distinctly bored me until the sudden, eerie revelation in the middle that things were not normal in this world. It was like a moment from Lost. The ending left me wanting more.
The other author was China Miéville, whose story, “The Design,” felt like a return to Angie Sage’s Septimus Heap, especially since the narrator was the same, Gerard Doyle. But unlike in the magical world of Septimus, the mystery in “The Design” wasn’t just a problem to solve but a baffling intrusion on the natural world, which made it more mysterious and intriguing.
Even though my mood has been better in the past week, I still have an itch for the surreal, a feeling captured nicely by a video I ran across on liminal spaces. So I’m on the lookout for anything similar. I’d been meaning to try China Miéville, so I decided to take advantage of my curiosity and continue my exploration with Perdido Street Station. It’ll take a couple of weeks at least. It’s not quite the surreal I was looking for, more like a more serious Discworld, but it’s still interesting and surprisingly relatable for me.
People
🙂
Sunday I tested some online board games created by a friend. He’d coded both the games and the platform they ran on. He was testing them with 4+ players, so we had a little voice chat party. The games were good, we helped him find some bugs, and it was fun to hang out with Dutch people.
