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Jul. 19th, 2022 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatActually it wasn't as hot as I thought it would be today. Yesterday was worse with all of the thunderstorms and sticky humidity. Also, my body is a human weather vane and doesn't deal with thunderstorms well - or electricity in the air - it makes me irritable.
Mother told me that the crematorium wrapped my father's body in the flag prior to cremating him (they use old flags to wrap the body's in for cremation) and ...this is the best part. They planted a tree in his name, they wouldn't tell her where, but still - a tree has been planted for my Dad. This makes me so happy. My brother wasn't as impressed - his response was - "I have plenty of trees", my response was "yay, more trees!" I honestly think I was a wood nymph or a tree in a past life.
It's my one caveat regarding a view - sky and trees. I really don't care about seeing anything else.
***
Update on Mother and the pshing scam. Apparently what happened was mother was trying to get rid of a Best Buy Geek Squad subscription for her computer that she wasn't using. My brother found the number in a Geek Squad email about the subscription being renewed in my father's email account. Keep in mind - that my father died on June 10. It was just a week ago. We're grieving and kind of stressed.
Anyhow she called the number - and...luckily stopped just short of wiring them money or sharing banking information. My brother spent the last two days fixing the problem with my mother. He got her on credit alerts, and helped her change her email address, also helped her figure out how to get her social security number blocked. Her credit card is also blocked.
***
While watching DVR'd GH episode. I usually ff during the commercials, but the DVR isn't making it easy lately.
News update: Next on the news at 4pm.. A man was shot and kill while saving parking spots for Law & Order Television Shoot.
Me: Wait. WTF? [ I looked up from the computer, stared at the screen (because I'm writing/typing this post as I'm watching the soap.) and thought, did I hear that right? I couldn't have. )
Update: I did. Here's the Man shot and killed while holding parking spots for Law & Order Organized Crime Television Shoot
Can we get rid of guns now?
***
I've just about given up on Helen Huang's The Bride Test, at the 84% mark. I may skim the rest - which is doable, it's mostly the two characters navel gazing. They are doing an awful lot of navel gazing in this book, and my tolerance for it is...well, not as great you'd expect considering how many romance novels I've read. It may be my mood. The lead female character is a specific type of female character in romance novels that irks me. (Note it's not that she is Vietnamese or an immigrant - I actually love those two items - it is why I bought the book.) No, it's that she is rather self-absorbed and "needy". She is similar to the characters in Jo Jo Moyes novels - who also annoyed me, I can't read Jo Jo Moyes. I hated Me Before You, and gave up on it early on. And the female characters in various New Adult contemporaries. She needs a guy to tell her how great she is, and that he loves her, and well to "validate" her. His actions don't seem to matter, and she's too self-absorbed to see how much pain he's in or that he struggles with various things. It's all about her, and her pain, and her issues.
I actually liked the male lead better - Khai, who is autistic. The author is too - and I think the author understands the male lead better, which may be the problem? What is frustrating me is Khai (who is autistic) assumption that he can't love or feel love because he's autistic. That's such BS. It's actually the exact opposite. People with autism spectrum disorder - or who are on the spectrum - feel too much, not too little. That's the problem. The author clearly feels she has to make a point about the fact that someone who is autistic feels love, just expresses and feels it differently, possibly even more intensely. And 98% of the book is focused on that, which wouldn't be a problem in of itself, except, her way of emphasizing it is by making My (aka Esme) the female protagonist, clueless.
Completely and utterly clueless, self-absorbed and needy. As a result the cultural heritage, immigration issues, mixed race, lost father, child out of wedlock stigma, lying, etc gets lost. I'm at the 84% mark and she's still not: a) told him about her daughter who is still Vietnam, or b) found her father.
Their big misunderstanding is over the fact that he's autistic and neither can figure out if her loves her or not, because he can't say it to her. Even though his willing to help her get a green card, marry her, pay her way, put her up, and help her find her father. Considering the guy who told her that he loved her - knocked her up, took off, married someone else, and
then came back to try to convince her to give up their child for him and his new wife to raise - you'd think she'd get a clue? Apparently not.
It's not over her lying about her kid. It's not about her father. No, it's that he can't tell he loves her because of the autism. And that's 90% of the book.
Ugh. Honestly. That's a huge trope in contemporary and historicals, and its so annoying.
Sherry Thomas and Courtney Milan at least had fun with it, and kind of subvert the trope, by having the woman not admit her feelings to the man.
I like their contemporary romance novels and historicals better. Alisha Ra is also pretty good. There are good ones out there - they are ridiculously hard to find.
Sorry needed to rant about it. I may move back to the historical which is about a nutty female physician who had taken over her father's practice and been corresponding in his name with various people - trying to convince a former Colonel and heir to a Dukedom, to let her help his foster mother, third cousin twice removed.
She wants to be a doctor, society won't let her attend medical school outright. She was trained by her father, and is a herbalist. Using various herbs and ointments to aid the sick and relieve pain - often effectively.
She'd been corresponding with an Army Colonel, who was stationed in France. He though he was corresponding with her father - an elderly physician. She thought she was corresponding with an elderly Colonel. Both were wrong.
It's kind of comical, if a touch slow. She doesn't want to get married ( a big difference with the contemporary - in the contemporaries - they want to get married, in the historicals they don't - it's rather amusing, and why I find the historicals to be a bit more progressive than the contemporaries.)
She wants to become a Doctor. Last thing she wants is a Duke. She follows the hero - to aid his sick parental relation, nothing more. Also she doesn't want him to reveal her secret - that she's been posing as her father to practice medicine. This is the big conflict - not, oh, I need to marry some guy in the US to become a citizen and hopefully he won't find out about my kid, and oh, I want him to love me too. No, the conflict here is a woman trying to do a typically male profession in the early 1800s or thereabouts. And they say, contemporaries are more feminist?
***
Work is still crazy. For the first time in a while, I'm behind on my work.
Coordinated and facilitated two Teams meetings today on project, have one tomorrow, plus sent out agendas, created an addendum, uploaded it, got it approved.
Also Gabe gave me flowers, or did I say that already?
Mother told me that the crematorium wrapped my father's body in the flag prior to cremating him (they use old flags to wrap the body's in for cremation) and ...this is the best part. They planted a tree in his name, they wouldn't tell her where, but still - a tree has been planted for my Dad. This makes me so happy. My brother wasn't as impressed - his response was - "I have plenty of trees", my response was "yay, more trees!" I honestly think I was a wood nymph or a tree in a past life.
It's my one caveat regarding a view - sky and trees. I really don't care about seeing anything else.
***
Update on Mother and the pshing scam. Apparently what happened was mother was trying to get rid of a Best Buy Geek Squad subscription for her computer that she wasn't using. My brother found the number in a Geek Squad email about the subscription being renewed in my father's email account. Keep in mind - that my father died on June 10. It was just a week ago. We're grieving and kind of stressed.
Anyhow she called the number - and...luckily stopped just short of wiring them money or sharing banking information. My brother spent the last two days fixing the problem with my mother. He got her on credit alerts, and helped her change her email address, also helped her figure out how to get her social security number blocked. Her credit card is also blocked.
***
While watching DVR'd GH episode. I usually ff during the commercials, but the DVR isn't making it easy lately.
News update: Next on the news at 4pm.. A man was shot and kill while saving parking spots for Law & Order Television Shoot.
Me: Wait. WTF? [ I looked up from the computer, stared at the screen (because I'm writing/typing this post as I'm watching the soap.) and thought, did I hear that right? I couldn't have. )
Update: I did. Here's the Man shot and killed while holding parking spots for Law & Order Organized Crime Television Shoot
Can we get rid of guns now?
***
I've just about given up on Helen Huang's The Bride Test, at the 84% mark. I may skim the rest - which is doable, it's mostly the two characters navel gazing. They are doing an awful lot of navel gazing in this book, and my tolerance for it is...well, not as great you'd expect considering how many romance novels I've read. It may be my mood. The lead female character is a specific type of female character in romance novels that irks me. (Note it's not that she is Vietnamese or an immigrant - I actually love those two items - it is why I bought the book.) No, it's that she is rather self-absorbed and "needy". She is similar to the characters in Jo Jo Moyes novels - who also annoyed me, I can't read Jo Jo Moyes. I hated Me Before You, and gave up on it early on. And the female characters in various New Adult contemporaries. She needs a guy to tell her how great she is, and that he loves her, and well to "validate" her. His actions don't seem to matter, and she's too self-absorbed to see how much pain he's in or that he struggles with various things. It's all about her, and her pain, and her issues.
I actually liked the male lead better - Khai, who is autistic. The author is too - and I think the author understands the male lead better, which may be the problem? What is frustrating me is Khai (who is autistic) assumption that he can't love or feel love because he's autistic. That's such BS. It's actually the exact opposite. People with autism spectrum disorder - or who are on the spectrum - feel too much, not too little. That's the problem. The author clearly feels she has to make a point about the fact that someone who is autistic feels love, just expresses and feels it differently, possibly even more intensely. And 98% of the book is focused on that, which wouldn't be a problem in of itself, except, her way of emphasizing it is by making My (aka Esme) the female protagonist, clueless.
Completely and utterly clueless, self-absorbed and needy. As a result the cultural heritage, immigration issues, mixed race, lost father, child out of wedlock stigma, lying, etc gets lost. I'm at the 84% mark and she's still not: a) told him about her daughter who is still Vietnam, or b) found her father.
Their big misunderstanding is over the fact that he's autistic and neither can figure out if her loves her or not, because he can't say it to her. Even though his willing to help her get a green card, marry her, pay her way, put her up, and help her find her father. Considering the guy who told her that he loved her - knocked her up, took off, married someone else, and
then came back to try to convince her to give up their child for him and his new wife to raise - you'd think she'd get a clue? Apparently not.
It's not over her lying about her kid. It's not about her father. No, it's that he can't tell he loves her because of the autism. And that's 90% of the book.
Ugh. Honestly. That's a huge trope in contemporary and historicals, and its so annoying.
Sherry Thomas and Courtney Milan at least had fun with it, and kind of subvert the trope, by having the woman not admit her feelings to the man.
I like their contemporary romance novels and historicals better. Alisha Ra is also pretty good. There are good ones out there - they are ridiculously hard to find.
Sorry needed to rant about it. I may move back to the historical which is about a nutty female physician who had taken over her father's practice and been corresponding in his name with various people - trying to convince a former Colonel and heir to a Dukedom, to let her help his foster mother, third cousin twice removed.
She wants to be a doctor, society won't let her attend medical school outright. She was trained by her father, and is a herbalist. Using various herbs and ointments to aid the sick and relieve pain - often effectively.
She'd been corresponding with an Army Colonel, who was stationed in France. He though he was corresponding with her father - an elderly physician. She thought she was corresponding with an elderly Colonel. Both were wrong.
It's kind of comical, if a touch slow. She doesn't want to get married ( a big difference with the contemporary - in the contemporaries - they want to get married, in the historicals they don't - it's rather amusing, and why I find the historicals to be a bit more progressive than the contemporaries.)
She wants to become a Doctor. Last thing she wants is a Duke. She follows the hero - to aid his sick parental relation, nothing more. Also she doesn't want him to reveal her secret - that she's been posing as her father to practice medicine. This is the big conflict - not, oh, I need to marry some guy in the US to become a citizen and hopefully he won't find out about my kid, and oh, I want him to love me too. No, the conflict here is a woman trying to do a typically male profession in the early 1800s or thereabouts. And they say, contemporaries are more feminist?
***
Work is still crazy. For the first time in a while, I'm behind on my work.
Coordinated and facilitated two Teams meetings today on project, have one tomorrow, plus sent out agendas, created an addendum, uploaded it, got it approved.
Also Gabe gave me flowers, or did I say that already?
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Date: 2022-07-20 08:18 am (UTC)(I think this is the first time you mentioned the flowers, nice selection!)
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Date: 2022-07-20 09:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-20 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-20 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-20 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-21 10:12 pm (UTC)It's good that your mom didn't end up giving her bank information over. These phishing scams are just getting worse. :\