Finally watched Despicable Me 2 the other day. Like the first one, it was brightly colored and fun, but (also like the first one) Wonderful Husband and I kind of wish the plot had gone in a different direction. Ah well.

We also went to the movie theater yesterday to see Deadpool. Which so very much earned its R rating (violence in spades, language, sex and nudity)... but was a hell of a lot of fun. Would definitely watch again.

Have been reading lots of books, too. Powered my way through rereading The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, and am currently working on rereading Ysabel. I also finished Games Wizards Play, which was intriguing, and read Captive Prince. Which feels like it started life as fanfic of something, but if so, it's either something I don't know, or the author did a very good job of filing off the serial numbers. So at some point I need to post reviews of those latter two.

But for now, my new computer is not yet up and assembled, and Wonderful Husband and Squiddle and I are still in the middle of a long recovery from being sick. We're in various stages of "mostly healthy but occasionally coughing lungs out," which is not fun. I'm just hoping we're all back to completely healthy by the time we step on a plane next month.

I've started reading Guy Gavriel Kay's Ysabel, which I knew was a sequel of sorts to the Fionavar Tapestry trilogy. Which I haven't read for fifteen or more years. Forty pages in, I just hit characters that I know are from the trilogy, but heck if I can remember anything more about it/them than that. So I'm dilemma'ing: to continue reading, or to stop until I can reread the trilogy again...?

Probably I'm going to keep reading, while I have inlaws to play with the baby, and put the trilogy on my reread list. I have them at home; surely I'll eventually find time there to reread them...?

I've been rereading some of Bujold's novels. A Civil Campaign and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance remain my favorites, but I'm happy to report that Cryoburn improves on reread. And its last drabble still has me crying every time I read it.

Also, I went out to a pair of estate sales with my parents this morning! First I've been to since, well, the baby. I didn't get much - a couple embroidery things and a Pyrex lemonade jug - but it was fun.

( Grimm, or, Fish Are Friends Not Food )

( And the inevitable baby stuffs. )

Clarke's third law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," is often misquoted with the word science substituted for technology. I can picture a slightly older Hermione, deep into magical research, offering the inverse: that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science. With Ron looking blank and not getting what she means, because Hogwarts' education system is... well, biased is putting it kindly. There's no indication that anyone gets out of that school with higher than an eleven-year-old Muggle's mathematics education, for example.

Though science and magic aren't mutually exclusive; Diane Duane's Young Wizards universe, for instance, has the two married and melded as one, where spells are akin to long physics problems. Of course, I suspect Kit and Nita would look heavily askance at Hogwarts. Their magic is actually serious business, and they, and all their fellow wizards, are actively involved in slowing the death of the universe from day one.

I think I must poke about and see if anyone's written a crossover, and, if so, how they approached it. The basic underlying assumptions about magic and the universe are, to put it mildly, extremely contradictory....

A few weekends ago I picked up a bunch of (mostly) old books at estate sales. Which included Pickles the Fire Cat, which I haven't read since I was like six. Oh, the memories....

But I digress. Included in my purchases was a 1944 edition of The Good Housekeeping Cookbook. Now, mind, this is not one of those paltry thin pamphlets. Just shy of a thousand pages, it would make a respectable doorstop. But why I bought it (for $1.50) was for the cultural insight. This was published during WWII. It has instructions for stretching those things which were rationed (butter, oil, sugar, meat, etc.) There are sections that start with sentences like "Plucking should be done promptly and quickly after bird has stopped fluttering and is still warm."

I find this a heartening contrast to the modern slow-cooker cookbook I have also been perusing, wherein (for instance) ~75% of the chicken recipes start with "take X boneless skinless chicken breast halves"....

Last night Wonderful Husband and I baked cookies. Part of this was prep for Fanime in two weekends' time: we work in ConOps and always, always bake a metric fuckton of cookies and schlep them up in our luggage for Ops and anyone who happens by to enjoy. So a week or two beforehand we usually test out recipes. Last night we did chocolate chip, which came out quite well, and tried out a new oatmeal raisin variant, which... tastes quite nice, but is very flat and too sticky for good packing/schlepping/ease of subsequent separation.

However!

The purpose of these cookies was in fact two-fold: not only were they to test recipes, but they were to be a bribe! For tonight, not too far from our home as these things go, Tamora Pierce was giving a short talk and then signing books. So I sewed up a couple small bags (embroidered her initials on the one that was plain muslin), we stuffed them with cookies, and off we went carrying ten hardbacks between us. I haven't been able to attend one of her signings since 2003, you see.... So now all of our Tortall books are signed (save the three we haven't acquired in hardback yet and the two that are, ah, very clearly ex-library copies...) as well as two of the Circle books. Which leaves me with eight more Circle books on the shelf as well as two short story collections. She's doing another signing Saturday evening in Pasadena, but though I think Wonderful Husband enjoyed tonight's talk he will probably not be willing to be schlepped to another one in two nights' time. I will probably go alone. So, should I take six (the remaining parts of the Circle quartets), eight (all Circle books), or ten (all books) with me...?

Patterns of Fashion 4. I haz it. It has color pictures, if less detail of the embroideries than I might have otherwise hoped.

So yesterday was lots of running around doing errands and housecleaning. Someday this domicile might be fit for formal company. (Friends... well, I trust my friends will forgive me for being a wee bit slovenly.) Among other things, last night Wonderful Husband and I finished rearranging the living room to incorporate his new exercycle. This involved moving the china cabinet about a foot to one side, then moving a bookcase full of books into the space formerly held by the china cabinet. The rule of moving pieces of furniture with delicate (china) or heavy (books) items in them is to remove the items first. So at the moment the china cabinet is cleaned, dusted, and everything back inside, better organized than it was before. The books? Weeeeeell, the books are kind of still all over the living and dining rooms, though I've taken a stab at getting some of them organized and started to put 'em back on the shelves.

The upshot of this is: we have two sets of the Harry Potter books, one British and one American. Though I like the American covers better, the British take up less space and aren't reworded in the earlier books. Therefore, if anyone would like a set of hardback Harry Potter books, with dust jackets and in mint condition, drop me a comment. We also have a second copy of the British edition of the last book, hardback, adult cover, similarly in mint conditon....

Hmm. Moebius 39 was a bit of a "curry" episode. By which I do not mean Mirai's favorite Earth food, but rather the Utena episode featuring curry. In other words, utter CRACK. But at least it was amusing crack. Am wondering why Mirai's alien sense did not start tingling when Sayuri was possessed by Serpent. Possibly because he was still hiding dormant in her at that point?

Also finished the linen Regency shift I started last night. It's from the Sense and Sensibility pattern as marketed by Simplicity and went together easily enough. I think it helps that I'd had prior experience with underarm gussets, though, as when Liz was making her version earlier this week they were baffling her. I was very confused by the grainline of the gussets though... I thought the bias was always supposed to be on the diagonal of the square, to help with freedom of movement? The chemise is currently on my dressmaker's dummy. I really need to name the poor thing. I really need to actually, like, sew the cover to fit my size instead of just pinning it to such. But at least now she's clothed. I've gained real interest in "matching" Liz's project this week due to two realizations. One is that I think I have the fabric for this dress, a lovely blue print on cream raw silk that I purchased ages ago, and the second is that I can sneak Regency outfits under the fashion radar and wear them to work! Plus with any luck the construction will turn out to be fairly intuitive.

I also stopped at the library today and checked out the last Jane Austen book I've not yet read (Persuasion), and put three books on hold... Corsets and Crinolines by Norah Waugh, The Cut of Women's Clothes 1600-1930, also by Norah Waugh, and The Art of Dress 1500-1914 by Jane Ashelford. I should probably have the first and last in my hands next week, but the middle one is checked out and one other person has it on hold before me, so that may be another month. At least they have it available for checkout at all! Seven copies in the library system and six are in the Reference system, as is the sole copy of The Cut of Men's Clothes. But for now I disappear back downstairs with interfacing and muslin and my notebook and the pattern for Armida's wedding dress, and start to figure that out... after I make up another pot of tea for myself, that is.