Family

June

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June 2nd was my Dad’s birthday, he turned 68. The party was fun, a good time was had by all 🙂

Two days later I went for a walk at Lauwersoog with Eva, Nienke, Tessa (my dog) and Gregorius (Eva’s dog). It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, there was a gentle breeze, we enjoyed ourselves, the dogs had fun. Then it got even better when Nienke tossed Gregorius’ fetching toy into a very, very tall tree… Eva and I watched her toss sticks at it for a while trying to get it to fall down. Eventually I joined in the throwing of sticks which led to success a couple minutes later when I hit the branch the toy was stuck on and it came down.

The day after that, I went to Verhildersum with Mom to go check out the Fabric Day. We saw awesome crafts, there was this huuuuge quilt in different purple fabrics, and a guy who makes little tin statuettes of people in historical dress. There was also a lot of felt work, both in felting things (making objects while one is felting the wool), as well as making things from felt fabric.

June 15 I went out for dinner at Pappa Joe’s with Eva, Nienke, Ingrid & Mellien. It was tasty, and nice to hang out with the full group. We crossed the street for awesome ice cream afterwards.

I joined Archive of Our Own, a fan fiction archive. So far I find it a more pleasurable interface compared to fanfiction.net, where I used to post. That has been a number of years though, and in the years between I’ve not spent a lot of time either reading or writing fan fiction. I’m slowly getting back into it. I reposted some of the works I wrote years ago of which I still think they’re good on A3O. The rest needs a rewrite. I’ll keep the originals up on ff.net, that way I’ll have a history and can later compare between versions and responses.

And in minor things, I rearranged my living room, baby-sat the dog for a day while the parents were off on the yearly Sibling Day (where mom and her siblings, plus partners, go out for a day) and we had an awesome! thunderstorm.

Queen’s Day 2011

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For my home town, Parentville, Queen’s Day is not only that, but also the day that the town playgrounds are officially opened again after the yearly maintenance. Since this is a prime opportunity to hang out with my family, I usually spend this day in Parentville. This year was a bit of a disappointment. There’s always a small parade trough town before the opening takes place. The parade consists of a wagon carrying the smaller kids while the older kids ride bikes after it and often followed by a contingent of adolescents and adults as well. Now, Parentville is quite a small town, but there were so very few kids this year (especially on the wagon) it was kinda sad to see. Partly this may have been the weather (even though there was sunshine, the wind was cold) but it seems participation in this town ritual is going down every year anyway. I didn’t even bother taking my proper camera with me, electing instead to just go with my phone. I video’d the arrival of the parade, the playing of the anthem and the opening so didn’t get a lot of pictures. I took some of my parents, and had my aunt shoot me and my parents together. Later in the afternoon Mom and I took a quick stroll around the flea market that followed the opening. This was well populated, both in kids selling their stuff as well as adults and other kids walking/running around and talking and occasionally buying stuff. I bought a couple books from the Famous Five series for 50 cents apiece, so good bargain.

 

Book Club: 2011-01a // The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

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Finished my first Book Club book, albeit a little late (and I haven’t even started on Dust yet, fortunately I’ve read it before). This first book was N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

Synopsis

The book is about (and narrated by) Yeine Darr, the still fresh ruler of the small country Darre, up north. Her Arameri mother ran away from her homeland; and her father, the king of the world; when she was young to marry a non-Arameri. So Yeine, although raised Darre, is also half Arameri. And as the book starts, her mother has recently been murdered and she has received a summons from her grandfather to come to the capital city of Sky.

Once there, she learns that her grandfather, Dekarta, is getting older, and has designated her his third heir besides her two cousins. Over the next days, Yeine strives to learn more about the circumstances of her mother’s death, since she is convinced one of the Arameri family has done the deed, or at least ordered it done.

While working on this, Yeine meets that which allows the Arameri to rule the world: captive gods, used as tools and weapons after they were conquered by their brother/uncle, Bright Itempas. The gods want to be free, and they convince Yeine to help them pull this off. When Yeine learns that her purpose is not to be a true contender for the throne but instead a sacrifice necessary to transfer the power, and that the gods have been using her for longer than she thought, matters get complicated.

Review (there will be spoilers but I’ll try not to go overboard)

I’m a bit in two minds about it. It has intriguing world building,with the many, many small(er) lands overruled by Sky only because they have the captive gods to do their bidding and thus force them to behave. I also liked that, despite worshipping of Itempas becoming mandatory, the different lands keep their culture. Too bad we were not really exposed to any of it, not even the cultures of Darre and Sky, beyond superficial glimpses here and there. Although we do see more of Sky, than of Darre.

Darre is a matriarchal society, with a strong warrior culture, and men are protected as prize horses. Of Sky we only see what is going on there, the actual lands surrounding it, hardly even mentioned. The city, however, is Arameri only. The only people allowed there (overnight, anyways) are family members. And that means that down to the last servant, everyone has Arameri blood. The level of purebloodedness is indicated by a marking on the forehead. And in turn, that marking determines how much control the person has over the captive gods. To be in Sky, at night, without a mark is very dangerous.

Yeine gets a fullblood mark, even though she technically is a halfblood. This makes her power over the gods almost absolute, only Dekarta can overrule her. At least, that’s the plan. Except that by the time she gets the marking she has already agreed to assist the gods, and her marking has been neutralised by them. The gods have agreed not to harm her.

I found the idea of a god killing his sister and enslave his brother and his children into human captivity refreshing. I don’t think I’ve read something like this before. It also made the desire of these entities to be free again, and how far they would go for it, much more believable. After all, they are gods, they made the universe, they were free to take whatever form they choose, and now they’re stuck on a planet, in a shape that is more or less unchangeable, and that for centuries.

The characterisations of  the captive Nahadoth and Sieh were well done, they really became people to me, with a history and feelings and good qualities and flaws; as did Yeine. With the other characters, however, I felt this much less. While I get that not every character can be as well fleshed out, it was disappointing that most of the often used secondary characters felt like cardboard to me. Viraine was okay, but Scimina… She’s Yeine main rival for the throne, yet she never becomes more than the standard villain-because-we-need-one. What drives her, and her treatment of Nahadoth, is never made clear. Relad was very promising in the beginning, but got neglected later on, which made his sudden semi-importance near the end come out of the blue.

Then Yeine herself. While we get a good idea of her personality and her appearance, the way her culture has influenced her versus how things are in Sky gets glossed over. I presume this has a lot to do with her mother’s influence on her, who was after all the heir to Sky untill she ran off, but Yeine shows remarkably little cultural surprise to how basic things work in Sky. Even something as seeing men being treated as something other than a show horse, to be kept at home and safe, should have taken some adjustment after growing up in a culture like hers.

For me the biggest turn-off however, for at least the first half of the book, was the jumpy narrative. The story is told as a big flashback, but is often interspersed with short bits of Yeine in the present just talking. Most of this are loose remarks, disjointed comments, and often she will later remember or forget something she mentioned earlier. These bits were terribly off putting at first as they interrupt the flow of the story, and their purpose is unclear. All it did for me was annoy me. Halfway through, though, when we learn that Yeine is sharing her body with the soul remains of the goddess Enefa, things change a bit, and for the better. From that point on, the interruptions become more and more internal dialogue between Yeine and the soul of Enefa, and they start to frame the story better.

In the last few chapters, as the end ceremony takes place and, of course, nothing goes as planned, it all finally fell into place. The pace of the plot picked up, and when Yeine died and became the goddess Enefa… That for me felt as the beginning of a story. It sort of worked as the ending, but it somehow made the rest of the story very trivial and more a too long prologue. The other bits that happened, with Kurue and Viraine, felt a bit like Jemisin pulled a rabbit from her hat. Viraine… it was to be expected that he would do something, that he had something to hide was pretty clear throughout the book, but Kurue came out of nowhere.

Bottom Line

I liked the book, even though the narrative threw me off. It was because of that mostly that it took me way longer than normal to finish the book. I’m interested in the sequel, but as I read that this has a different heroine, I’m not sure I will actually pick it up. I want to know more about Yeine’s adventures as a goddess, and more about Naha & Sieh. The review at Jawas Read, Too, gave the book a 7, and that’s a grade I think is quite fitting.

Links

Book Club Blog Review/Discussion

N.K. Jemisin’s website

In Short

Pro: Nahadoth & Sieh. You should read the book just for them.

Con: Jumpy narrative, not always very cohesive, and sometimes slow-moving.

ISBN: 9780316043915

That Was The Year That Was: 2010

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January

  • I started Working at KPN
  • We had a very severe winter, which resulted in public transport being down frequently, which is very! annoying
  • Had a tea party with friends at Mellien’s place, it was very fun

February

I’ve got nothing for this month. For some reason I only took 3 pictures in the whole of February… And I didn’t blog that month either. Sadness. Here, have all three February pics to cheer you up from this huge, huge let down 😀

March

  • Spring was on its way! Not that enthusiastically yet, but I saw the first real flowers peeking their heads above ground
  • Finally found a good design starting point for my future tattoo
  • Chocolate fondue with Eva & Ingrid, yum!
  • Bought new plants for my back yard
  • Found an awesome stick to turn into a staff. So far it’s still standing unused in my mudroom, but this year I strive to actually make something out of it 🙂
  • Went balfolking for the first time (no, it’s probably not a proper verb, and yes, I’ll tell you what it is; it’s dancing old ball and folk dances on medieval-and-slightly-later type music)

April

  • With Eva, Ingrid and Nienke to Lauwersoog, which was hilarious since we got stuck in the parking lot for two hours due to no traffic regulators being present
  • This was also the month mom turned 60, Happy Birthday!
  • Nienke and I added a garden door to our shared backyard to keep the neighbourhood kids from using our space as a shortcut path

May

  • Went to see the Men’s Choir of Warffum (of which my uncle is a member) perform at the museum estate Verhildersum
  • Spent Liberation Day in Parentville, where the whole street came together to decorate it for the festivities, great sense of community then, it should be like that more often
  • Ingrid came by, time for scrabble in the sun. Eva & Mellien dropped by a little later, on horseback.
  • Saw a hedgehog in the yard, awesome little critters
  • Joined the LifeLines research project about long term health

June

  • Dad’s birthday, 67 for him. Happy Birthday!
  • With the summer in full swing, Nienke and I tried outdoor computing
  • It was also the time for the yearly full family visit to my aunt and uncle in Harderwijk
  • Went to visit Soestdijk Palace with Mom and a friend of hers, it was awesome! I’m very glad I got to see the place before they closed it down

July

  • Celtic Midsummer Fest! Need I say more? An awesome weekend in which I went re-enacting for the first time. Great friends, great environment, great things to see and do, in short, a great time!
  • Also, aforementioned festival will (for me) henceforth always be connected to ‘that time I banged my toes into oblivion on a tent peg’ 😀
  • It got so warm I regularly spent my free time lounging outside with my feet in water. At first in two buckets (one for each foot) and later in a giant tub-like thing. Monkey approved of this, always enough water to drink nearby
  • I bought my binder this month, which turned out to be a huge step on the road of self-discovery and gender identity

August

  • Castlefest! Again, need I say more! Another awesome weekend! I’d not been able to go to Castlefest for some years, so it felt great to be back here. I love the atmosphere at this particular fest, plus being able to see Omnia live again for the first time in a couple of years as well was great, too.
  • Nienke had a BBQ in honour of her birthday, it was tasty!
  • Mom started knitting socks, after a conversation about how the warm socks we had were not getting any better.
  • Went out for a sudden and unexpected pizza with Eva & Nienke
  • Dad, on request, cut off the hedge in my front yard
  • Monkey got weird spots on his back leg, he ended up with a salve treatment and antibiotics and return appointments at the vet three times in a row. Fortunately, they have cleared up completely
  • And finally, this was the month I decided to continue blogging here, instead of trying to maintain both this blog and a LifeJournal

September

  • I burned my arm a wee bit by splashing hot olive oil on it. Fortunately I washed it off right away, so it didn’t go much further than some light second degree burning one one spot and some intenser first degree burning on the others. The second degree spot left a scar, it’s pretty 🙂
  • Had Tessa over to dog-sit, and got both her and Monkey in the same room without Tessa trying to eat Monkey, and without Monkey trying his best to hide as far away as possible
  • Had my own birthday, turned 26. Happy Birthday me!
  • Got the flu right after the birthday parties, ended up having to stay home for about a week, and had noticeably less energy the weeks after that while I was recovering further, not fun 🙁

October

  • Became obsessed with Glee 😀
  • Got my iPhone
  • Mom started knitting gloves, nice and warm for the winter
  • Went out to wok with Eva & Ingrid, yum!
  • Attended Julius’ birthday, which was a sort of High Tea type thing with a whole bunch of cakes he and his mom made, it was awesome (and very, very tasty!)
  • Bought two awesome pumpkins for Halloween and carved them; one a face, the other a sort of cheese with holes kinda idea with mice in the holes

November

  • Was a bit down for a good part of this month, a combination of Daylight Savings Time ending, winter coming up and some other random shit. Took a while before I saw the colours of the world in full shine again, instead of dulled
  • Mom knit me a pretty hat to match the gloves she made, my mom rocks 🙂
  • Discovered the Instagram iPhone app (among many, many other apps; I <3 apps 😀 ) which is fun to play with

December

  • Had a St. Nicholasmas (a combination of St. Nicholas and Christmas) party with Nienke, Eva, Mellien and Ingrid. It was fun and very nice to have a group get together again.
  • CATACLYSM! W00t!
  • The snow really hit. It looks awesome, but just like last year, it’s wreaking havoc on the public transport system. Which is kinda ridiculous as they spent the whole year winterproofing their systems and all, and they were sure it would be better this year… And then the first few days we have heavy snowfall, everything falls apart, again.
  • December was good, even though in the beginning of the month I wasn’t sure about that (residual gloominess from November)

Onwards to the End! Wait, Stop! We Missed It!

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Oh my, I have way too many things to post about to all fit in one post. Not just because it would be a mega Too Long; Don’t Read kinda thing, but also because some things are intro-type posts that work best on their own. So I’m spreading them out a bit, posting some of it now, and the rest tomorrow.

I mentioned my Christmas Day shenanigans, which were few and low-key, and the second day of Christmas wasn’t much different. I spent the day with my parents, just hanging out. Played a lot of Warcraft, and had a lovely dinner.  Spent the night at theirs too, and went to work the next day from there.

On Old Year’s Day (as we Dutchies call it), I had to work till about six, and went over to the parents again after that. I’m not too fond of New Year’s Eve, I dislike fireworks and can’t stand the incessant noises they make. Plus, for me the new year, seasonally speaking, starts at Yule. I’d brought my laptop to Parentville so I spent the evening backing up my files (which was way overdue, thank Gods there were no crashes or whatnots in between), and installing the Humble Indie Bundle I bought the other day. At midnight there was the standard well wishing and then I went on to play Warcraft, while keeping the dog calm as the neighbours went nuts with fireworks.

Tessa behaved quite nicely. She was still terrified, but there was less of the hiding in corners and such as she did last year. I think some of the things I picked up from watching Cesar Milan, in staying calm and assertive and getting her out of her heightened state when it was nearing the overboard level, worked quite well.

Hit the sack not too late and slept in this morning, absolute heaven! I don’t get to sleep in a lot at home. During the week I usually have to get up early for work, and on my days off, or when I have a late shift, the cat tends to wake me up. After hanging around the house, stopping by at home to feed and check up on Monkey, and having lunch, I finally showered. Shortly after ‘t was time for the traditional New Year’s Day meet up of my mom’s side of the family at my uncle’s house. We were there for most of the day, and it was great fun 🙂

I don’t do resolutions, but I do have my big 101 list, so I’ll be posting an update on that in a bit, along with the things on that list that are planned for this year. (note to self: comma’s are your friends, but don’t ignore periods…)

Other posts to come along shortly: final booklist, book club intro post thingy (I might combine those, probably easier), a little 2010 overview thing, the weekly four tomorrow and an intro for my 2011 Picture-a-Day thing.

Around the Internets II

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If you need to vehemently protest something, press the Nooooooooo Button.

Twenty obsolete English words that should make a come back. I’m especially fond of  Widdendream (Noun – “A state of mental disturbance or confusion”) and Brabble (Verb – “To quarrel about trifles; esp. to quarrel noisily, brawl, squabble”).

Ancient Amazonian Tribes (and current ones too) practice multiple paternity, a system where all the men who sleep with a woman are seen as the fathers to her children. This partly because each of the men was believed to be each child’s biological father, and partly because it provides a safety net if one or more of the parents were to die: there’s always someone around the kids can turn to. Check io9 for an article about the research.

The Brits have founded a new sport/game: The Lying Down Game.  Described by their creators as Parkour for those who can’t be arsed, it’s main purpose is to lie down in public places (see also the Facebook Group for more pictures). There’s really just two rules: 1) The more public the better &  2) The more people involved the better. Please be aware that the palms of your hands must be flat against your side and the tips of your toes pointing at the ground. Just as if you were standing, but vertically challenged. FACE DOWN!

Five Books is a website where every day a writer, thinker, politician, academic or what have you shares five non-fiction books on their specialist topic. The choices are such that, if you were to read all of the five books (or even just one) you get a good introduction into whatever the topic happens to be. Be an instant expert, as the website’s tagline says 😀

 

 

Weekly Four: week 43

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I’m grateful for good health, a couple of my kin of my parent’s generation have had/still have some health scares going on recently, so I’m just really grateful that my parents are good.

I’m happy my Halloween pumpkins turned out good.

I’m sad/annoyed bordering on angry because daylight savings time is over again. I do NOT deal well with winter time.

I learned I really need more hours in a day 😀 Too many plans, not enough time. Let alone enough light.

Almost 26

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Me sleeping, at maybe two weeks old or so, in October 1984

As I type this it’s 22 minutes to midnight, 22 minutes until my birthday. And if you really wanna fuck ants* to use a Dutchism, it’ll be another bunch of hours and minutes until the actual moment I age, as I wasn’t born until 17:54 or 17:56, I keep forgetting. I think it’s 17:54.

I celebrated this upcoming occasion past weekend, on Saturday with friends, and on Sunday with family. I tend to split them up as I live in a tiny house that can hold my friends, but not my family. I have a lot of them. 😀

Ingrid was the first to arrive on Saturday, and after chatting and having a drink (and Caek!) we went to play board games. Starting out with some trivial pursuit she brought. It was a topical edition about popular music, so I expected to loose. Ingrid’s a walking pop encyclopedia… However, luck and factoids were with me, and by the time Nienke barged in, I was well ahead. Yay!

Koehandel

With addition of Nienke, we were with enough to play Koehandel (Cow Trading), a game I bought quite a while ago, but never played yet as it needs a minimum of 3 people, and I normally can’t get Nienke to play along. This time I forced her, proclaiming that, since it was my birthday, she had no choice 😀

(If you’re not interested in games you might wanna speed through the next bit as I review the games we played.)

The game was fun, but not one of my favourites. The point is to get as many sets of animals. It starts with an auction each round, with one player being the auctioneer and the other two bidding. The winner then pays the auctioneer and gets the animal. The auctioneer can choose to excercise his right of sale by paying the highest bidder the amount they bid.

After a while, there will be people who have the same animal, and at that point they can barter for it. The one who wants to barter makes a blind offer, and the other chooses to accept or counter-offer. The addition of bluff cards (with a zero value) makes this a strategic part as you never really know what the offer is. If the other counter-offers, he too makes a blind offer and both players give their offer to the other. The one who then paid most gets the animal of the other. Nienke won this game.

Therapy

Then we went on with Therapy. We don’t play this often as it’s best with five or six and it gets out of hand, time-wise, very quickly. The game part of it is a bit long winded, but the conversations this leads to are awesome.

For the game you move around a board with psychiatric sofas trying to be the first one to get the six coloured pins in it. This would make the bed a bed of nails, so I don’t know if it would be very comfortable for a therapy session though…

To move you roll two dice, and then go forward, the square you land on tells you what to do next. This can be a question, and a right answer gets you a pin. Or it can be a question/wait square where you pick whether you want a question or stop your turn. Careful with picking the question here though, if you answer wrong you end up with a psychosis.

Other options are fantasy, where you have to answer a question about a Rörschach test kinda picture, or therapy. Depending on the number of players, this is group therapy or single therapy. If you land on a square in the same colour as one of the player sofas, you go into therapy with that player. If it is an unused colour, you go into therapy with all the other players. The therapist then asks a question (all questions are about the player) from the therapy cards, and the player writes down their answer. The therapist then says what he thinks the player answered, with reasoning. In Group therapy, all the therapists declare what they think the player answered and then come to a mutual answer. If the therapist was right, he wins a pin.

The therapy is the part I love most about the game, it leads to very interesting conversations about how you see each other, how others see themselves and what everyone would and wouldn’t do.

(Reviewy bit is over 😀)

This is what we did for the rest of the evening really, interspersed with more general chatting and eating and drinking and some picture taking.I got awesome presents as well. Ingrid gave me the Boyzone CD Brother. I was a major fan of them in my teens, and even though it has mellowed, I still like their music. They’re special to me because they were quite important to me then, so I do always want the physical CDs they release instead of just downloading it.

Mellien gave me a children’s book I wanted, a favourite I read many times as a kid. Eva gave me something from her and Juut together, a set of iron cutlery, made by Juut himself! It’s totally awesome! It’ll come in handy when we go re-enacting again 🙂 Pictures of this, and other birthday stuff to come along later, btw.

Ingrid stayed over and after Nienke had gone home too we got to talking about (among other things) Warcraft, so I showed her some things about the game, and explained stuff. She ended up with a better idea of what I do when I play and what I like about it. It was nice to share something that I like a lot, with one of my friends who’s not normally into that kind of thing.

Sunday morning I got up ridiculously early at 8:30 (not smart when you go to bed around 02:00…) cause I told my dad to pick me up around 9:00. This so there’d be more than enough time, once we got to the parents’ place, to prep for the family coming that afternoon and evening. I was gonna make a cake (hmmmm cheesecake), but decided against it as mom had an extra cake and we would’ve had too much. This meant I had extra time, and I could’ve (really should’ve) gone to bed for an hour or two longer. But I didn’t. I left Ingrid at Nienke’s for a cuppa while me and all my crap headed over to Parentville.

Had some time in the morning and early afternoon to play some WoW and mess with the Blog (I played with the layout and contents of the 101 list at the top) before the first people showed up. After that it was mostly very busy, very gezellig and very fun.I got two book gift cards, some money, very pretty and lovely scented shower gel and a drawing and a written piece by my two young second cousins 🙂

From my parents I got a book, in two parts, about the excavations in Midlaren, where I was working the second half of 2004. During the summer with the actual excavation, and from August to December with the washing, drawing and cataloging of the finds.

After the last ones left, I basically rolled into bed exhausted. All my energy was gone (that’s what lots of people for a prolonged period does to me, I’m a major introvert). It’s not back yet either. It didn’t help very much I had to work today, which, by necessity, has more people too 😀

Bought some candy to treat my teammates at work with, and made it through the day without too much trouble. Although I did start to notice, half way through the day, that the cold I’ve been seeing at the horizon for a few days has hit home. My nose is stuffed and my energy regeneration is down to half strength 🙁

Scheduled for a full work day tomorrow, but gonna see if I can get off early. Need to sleep some more, and a half day off tomorrow along with Wednesdays usual freedom it should see me through the worst of it.

It’s 00:42 now, it’s my birthday 😀 Got the first congratulatory text message, from Gert, at 00:04, nice timing 😀

And with that I will say goodbye, and good night.

*Mierenneuken as we say means fucking ants, literally. It can also be said as mierenneuker which is to a person, as it means antfucker. It’s English counterpart would be nitpicking.