back in Bellevue, back to PT

My reaction to the contrast between here and Boston is weird: snow back east, cherries and other early trees in bloom here. Bright and cold above the snow versus warm, gray, and damp. Arlington looked more "normal" to my eye than Bellevue; I think that's as much architecture as weather.

I flew back yesterday (all went smoothly except that the airplane seat made my back hurt). Exercise this morning, and then PT after lunch. Both went well; the only change to the PT is that I am now supposed to do the arm-as-pendulum stretch in three different ways instead of two, and the isometrics were easier than last time. Also, this was the first morning in a while that I haven't felt a need/desire for an NSAID. I had a brief twinge while waiting for the bus after lunch, but only brief, despite the exercise and all.

(ETA: So of course I wrote that, did a bit of other stuff on the computer, and started to sort some laundry, and another twinge. By the time I got over to the sink to take a naproxen, it was feeling okay, so I am holding off for now.)

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Apparently I drafted but never posted an entry from Adrian's computer, several days ago. The title of that was "Greetings from the snowy East Coast" and I'm dropping it at the bottom of this, partly for my own reference:

I am told that as of this weekend, Boston has passed 100 inches of snow this winter. However, I apparently picked the exact right time to travel: my flight from Seattle arrived slightly early, the roads were okay (though the cabbie was annoying for unrelated reasons), and it was nice enough Thursday for me to happily go to Davis Square with Adrian, who had an appointment: tea, Diesel's special apple cider with whipped cream (sounds weird, tastes good), and falafel, linked by walking around on a sunny day. It's supposed to get cold overnight, though, and I suspect everything that melted today is going to be a slick mess by morning.

Mostly I have been spending time quietly with adrian_turtle, reading and talking and such; the party we had hoped to attend yesterday was canceled because while the roads are fine, parking is still a mess.

( exercise details, nothing exciting here )

Reading Wednesday, on Thursday again

This time the delay is because I spent most of Wednesday traveling.

Another brief post, because I read a lot while visiting adrian_turtle, and they were mostly her books so I can't check things.

Recently read:

At the Relton Arms, by Evelyn Sharp. Finished this on the flight to Boston. Despite some undercutting of romance cliches, overall was not impressed. For some reason I want to quote Lady Bracknell, though in this case the good do not all end happily, nor do the bad end unhappily.

Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2014 edition. What it says on the tin, a collection of short stories. Free download from the publisher's website, convenient as a kindle book for travel. I enjoyed most of these, and skipped a couple that didn't grab me quickly; one oddity is that the stories are arranged alphabetically by author name.

The sweetness at the bottom of the pie, by Alan Bradley. Adrian lent me this, after Mrissa recommended it somewhere. A murder mystery from the viewpoint of a ridiculously precocious 11-year-old girl, who is in love with chemistry and has no idea of why it might be a good idea to give information to the police rather than try to find the answers before them. I enjoyed it, but a person could easily find the narrator irritating and not amusing.


I am half-sick of shadows, by Alan Bradley. If you liked the first you will probably like this one. The title is from Tennyson, who I don't care for, but all the quotes after the epigraph are from Shakespeare, who I do. I wouldn't have read these two books so close together except that my shoulder was doing an odd thing that had me selecting books partly by size and shape, which reduced the number of choices.

At the Bertram Hotel, by Agatha Christie; another Miss Marple book, different enough from the two I read recently that I enjoyed the similar style and time spent with Jane Marple rather than finding the stories too much alike. (This one courtesy of the Arlington library.)

Nurk, by Ursula Vernon (ursulav), a short illustrated adventure book about a vole ("Nurk" is his nickname) who stumbles into an adventure after getting a letter intended for his famous grandmother. I kept reading funny bits aloud to Adrian (because I was laughing as I read, and she asked for the funny bits), leading her to say that she would probably reread it. This has a somewhat different tone than Digger, but I suspect will appeal to many of the same readers, though this is a book with illustrations and Digger is a graphic novel.

Perfect Gallows, by Peter Dickinson. I picked this up thinking it was a detective story; it's much more a character study than a mystery, though it starts with the discovery of a corpse and ends with an explanation of what happened. The viewpoint character is at least close to being a sociopath, whose self-justification is that his art as an actor is more important than human connections or feelings. There's also a fair amount about 1944 Britain and the effects of the war on the civilian population. There might be an interesting comparison with Sayers's The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, but it would take someone with more/different critical skills than I have to do more than say "these have some things in common, and might be overlooked by people who don't usually read detective fiction."

I also read and enjoyed an unpublished novel that turned out to be the right length for a Boston-Seattle flight.

Currently reading:

The Just City, by Jo Walton