March 7, 2026 - Three Day B-Day Weekend
Mar. 7th, 2026 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatBought myself flowers. Reddish purple carnations with baby's breath - a small bouquet that fits perfectly in a small green ceramic vase in the my living window. The Saturn night light is lighting it up nicely. (It's a small globe with Saturn in the middle of it, and it lights up - I got it for Christmas one year from my niece. Nieces are easier than children, you can spoil them, they give you neat gifts, and there's no responsibility. This one is becoming a forest ranger, who specializes in putting out forest fires and is a budding wildlife investigative journalist. She's dating a forest ranger at the moment, while in graduate school in Montana. My trees have a savior. Oh, and she's not on social media.)
I'm also on a total news blockage. Yes, I'm ignoring what is happening outside of my section of the world at the moment.
And, I bought myself birthday cake. Because birthdays must have cake. (I think I have birthday candles somewhere? Although they aren't necessary. I'm kind of beyond the point of candles.) It's the only time I eat cake all year long - mainly because I'm diabetic and gluten intolerant, so finding a gluten free cake that's not going to put me into a diabetic coma is ...not easy. I ended up buying three small slices of cake by "By the Way Bakery" - which sells its products (made in NYC) via Whole Foods. I bought a slice of cloud coconut cake, raspberry cake, and chocolate cake. Also, was deliciously surpised by a Gluten-Free Desert Special at Met Fresh - which is about four blocks or five minute walk from my home. This was for a Dark and White Chocolate Cake, Gluten Free with White Chocolate Mouse and dark chocolate ganache layers and icing. It's a layer cake. It's delicious by the way - I cut myself a small slice tonight - garnished with whipped cream and raspberries. It will probably last a week.
The birthday itself lands on Monday, which I'm taking off for two reasons, a) it's my birthday, b) it's now the day after Daylight Savings Time begins in the US. (Whomever came up with that idea is paying for it somehow. Maybe they'll get hit by a cranky sleep deprived bus driver?)
Mother kindly bought me gifts via Amazon (which is relying too heavily on tech and making life more difficult for its customers as a result).
Mother: It says it will go to your locker, and it didn't give me a choice.
Me: All you have to do is forward me, Amazon's email regarding "pickup".
Mother: Okay it got undeliverable address.
Me: Did you send it to the right one?
Mother: I guess not.
Me: Spells out my correct email address.
Mother: did you get it now?
Me: No, I got your email notification that the message was undeliverable because you sent it to (shadowkat****[Bad username or site: gmail @ cpm].) It was fine except for the cpm. CPM doesn't exist. It is .com. I need you to send me the original email - the one from Amazon.
Mother: I don't know how to do that. It won't let me.
[After thirty minutes of trying to explain]
Me: Go to sent. Forward the Amazon email that you sent to the wrong address.
Mother: It won't let me, it keeps saying nondeliverable.
Me: Delete the wrong email from it, and put in the correct one.
Mother: Oh, I see I put in the wrong one as default and it keeps coming up whenever I hit reply all.
Me: Okay, select forward, not reply, put in my email and send.
Mother sends it.
Mother: Okay I don't know if that worked, it doesn't appear to -
ME: It worked! I got it.
[If I ever meet the nitwit tech genius who invented gmail - we are going to have words. Also, I want to sue the nitwit for pain and suffering regarding spam email, the inability to find messages, and crap like the above. [Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft Tech software engineers, the proverbial thorn in my side. Stop upgrading your software - you aren't improving it. You are making it worse. Gmail was actually pretty useful at first, now it's a headache and I can't leave it. Ugh. No personal offense intended to any unknown software engineers who may or may not be reading this entry. Unless of course you invented or are directly involved in upgrading gmail, Amazon, Microsoft, or Apple programs - then yes, offense strongly intended. Shoo.]
I go down and get the package, which entails point the phone at the locker in my mail room, pushing a button for blue tooth, then pushing pick up and the locker with the package opens.
I open the package, which Mother told me had two wrapped presents inside. I open, and one is placed loosely in a gift bag, the receipts and messages are in the bottom of the box, and the other is placed on top of a very small gift bag that it couldn't fit into. So, I put it in the larger gift bag. (My poor 83 year old Mother spent an additional $3.50 for the gift wrapping for both. Amazon, you and I are going to have words one of these days.)
I miss the days in which things were just delivered by the US Postal Service. Mother can no longer send a check by US Post - because the last time she did it - the cards were stolen. Oddly they didn't try to cash the checks (not that they could, she cancelled them). Apparently a disgruntled postal worker stole a bunch of cards and mail, and confiscated it just to be ornery. They caught them finally.
It's been gloomy all week long. That lyric from an old Sarah McLachlan song comes to mindThe winter here is cold and bitter, It’s chilled us to the bone
I havent seen the sun for weeks...
Which is a bit melodramatic, I know. It's been more like days. Although the winter has been cold and bitter here - no 80s or 70s like elsewhere. We still have the heat on. It's been in the 30s/40s F this week. Which granted is much better than the single digits, teens, or 20s like most of the winter, or 20s/low 30s like the previous week.
Tomorrow it's supposed to be warmer, which dare we hope, sunshine. And Monday sunny and in the 50s, and possibly get up into the upper 60s next week. If it does that - I may walk up the pier to the cherry blossom exhibit during lunch time sometime next week. (Nice thing about Breaking Bad and new work location is they don't seem to notice if I'm gone for about an hour and half at lunch.)
**
On the reading front? I'm still in a reading slump. But I've almost made my way through the 285 page paperback book - The Botanist's Assistant by Peggy Townsend, which I got for Christmas. It's only been three months since I started reading it. It's similar in writing style to Lesson's in Chemistry, but a mystery, about a autistic botany lab manager trying to solve the murder of her boss, the Botany/Cancer researcher at a University in I think? Arizona. I'm not sure what state we're in. The POV is third person distant, which is a point of view I struggle with as a reader. We only see the protagonist's perspective, but the writing puts us at a distance from her somehow tonally. Also, the writer spends a lot of time talking about inconsequential matters that have no real bearing on the plot or the characters. I don't need to know all the things the protagonist does around her house. I get snippets of things - I do need to know, like her family background, her relationships at work, etc. It's a very distancing narrative style - and it reminds me a little of the difficulty I had watching Lesson's in Chemistry - I felt emotionally distanced watching it too.
Having more success listening to Jim Butcher's Dresden Files via audible.
I finished Twelve Months - narrated by James Marsters. It was good.
Better than Battleground, mainly because more character development and less fighting. Reading group battle scenes is about as entertaining as reading sex scenes, they get redundant after a while, and sometimes the writer gets bored and feels the need to spice things up, so redundant and unbelievable. Less is often more in this department. I also don't tend to like battle scenes - or books focusing on them. It's a personal preference.
Sex scenes - I prefer - to battle scenes. Battleground kind of had both.
Twelve Months has a little of both, or the suggestion of both, but not to the same degree?
I'm listening to Blood Rites now - which is focusing more on the sex scenes and less on battle scenes, although it has both, but again not to the degree Battleground did. Blood Rites is when Dresden finds out who Thomas Wraith is - and why he's been helping him. It's book five of the series? Battleground is book 12, I think? Twelve Months, I think is book 13. Dresden Files is possibly the only urban fantasy series that I've read with over ten books that works. Most filter out around the five book mark. Illona Andrews is the only other one that worked past book five - it has close to 12 in the Kate Daniels series as well. And I re-read most of them, or relisten to them - it works. Both manage to evolve the characters and progress a plot, plus add new and interesting characters along the way, while building an interesting world, and sticking withing the boundaries of their genres. Andrews does play more with their genre, while Butcher stays within the confines of his. They've ruined me for Urban Fantasy, though. I don't like any of the others. Laurel K Hamilton - went off the rails early on, as did Kim Harrison, and I gave up on the others.
I'd say more...and have more to ramble on about - but I've got to go to bed. Or I'll screw up my sleep schedule more than daylight savings time is going to do. At least the clocks will automatically change themselves, except for the oven and microwave oven clocks.
[ETA: Fixed the year, because I can't quite get used to the fact that it is 2026 yet...]
I'm also on a total news blockage. Yes, I'm ignoring what is happening outside of my section of the world at the moment.
And, I bought myself birthday cake. Because birthdays must have cake. (I think I have birthday candles somewhere? Although they aren't necessary. I'm kind of beyond the point of candles.) It's the only time I eat cake all year long - mainly because I'm diabetic and gluten intolerant, so finding a gluten free cake that's not going to put me into a diabetic coma is ...not easy. I ended up buying three small slices of cake by "By the Way Bakery" - which sells its products (made in NYC) via Whole Foods. I bought a slice of cloud coconut cake, raspberry cake, and chocolate cake. Also, was deliciously surpised by a Gluten-Free Desert Special at Met Fresh - which is about four blocks or five minute walk from my home. This was for a Dark and White Chocolate Cake, Gluten Free with White Chocolate Mouse and dark chocolate ganache layers and icing. It's a layer cake. It's delicious by the way - I cut myself a small slice tonight - garnished with whipped cream and raspberries. It will probably last a week.
The birthday itself lands on Monday, which I'm taking off for two reasons, a) it's my birthday, b) it's now the day after Daylight Savings Time begins in the US. (Whomever came up with that idea is paying for it somehow. Maybe they'll get hit by a cranky sleep deprived bus driver?)
Mother kindly bought me gifts via Amazon (which is relying too heavily on tech and making life more difficult for its customers as a result).
Mother: It says it will go to your locker, and it didn't give me a choice.
Me: All you have to do is forward me, Amazon's email regarding "pickup".
Mother: Okay it got undeliverable address.
Me: Did you send it to the right one?
Mother: I guess not.
Me: Spells out my correct email address.
Mother: did you get it now?
Me: No, I got your email notification that the message was undeliverable because you sent it to (shadowkat****[Bad username or site: gmail @ cpm].) It was fine except for the cpm. CPM doesn't exist. It is .com. I need you to send me the original email - the one from Amazon.
Mother: I don't know how to do that. It won't let me.
[After thirty minutes of trying to explain]
Me: Go to sent. Forward the Amazon email that you sent to the wrong address.
Mother: It won't let me, it keeps saying nondeliverable.
Me: Delete the wrong email from it, and put in the correct one.
Mother: Oh, I see I put in the wrong one as default and it keeps coming up whenever I hit reply all.
Me: Okay, select forward, not reply, put in my email and send.
Mother sends it.
Mother: Okay I don't know if that worked, it doesn't appear to -
ME: It worked! I got it.
[If I ever meet the nitwit tech genius who invented gmail - we are going to have words. Also, I want to sue the nitwit for pain and suffering regarding spam email, the inability to find messages, and crap like the above. [Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft Tech software engineers, the proverbial thorn in my side. Stop upgrading your software - you aren't improving it. You are making it worse. Gmail was actually pretty useful at first, now it's a headache and I can't leave it. Ugh. No personal offense intended to any unknown software engineers who may or may not be reading this entry. Unless of course you invented or are directly involved in upgrading gmail, Amazon, Microsoft, or Apple programs - then yes, offense strongly intended. Shoo.]
I go down and get the package, which entails point the phone at the locker in my mail room, pushing a button for blue tooth, then pushing pick up and the locker with the package opens.
I open the package, which Mother told me had two wrapped presents inside. I open, and one is placed loosely in a gift bag, the receipts and messages are in the bottom of the box, and the other is placed on top of a very small gift bag that it couldn't fit into. So, I put it in the larger gift bag. (My poor 83 year old Mother spent an additional $3.50 for the gift wrapping for both. Amazon, you and I are going to have words one of these days.)
I miss the days in which things were just delivered by the US Postal Service. Mother can no longer send a check by US Post - because the last time she did it - the cards were stolen. Oddly they didn't try to cash the checks (not that they could, she cancelled them). Apparently a disgruntled postal worker stole a bunch of cards and mail, and confiscated it just to be ornery. They caught them finally.
It's been gloomy all week long. That lyric from an old Sarah McLachlan song comes to mindThe winter here is cold and bitter, It’s chilled us to the bone
I havent seen the sun for weeks...
Which is a bit melodramatic, I know. It's been more like days. Although the winter has been cold and bitter here - no 80s or 70s like elsewhere. We still have the heat on. It's been in the 30s/40s F this week. Which granted is much better than the single digits, teens, or 20s like most of the winter, or 20s/low 30s like the previous week.
Tomorrow it's supposed to be warmer, which dare we hope, sunshine. And Monday sunny and in the 50s, and possibly get up into the upper 60s next week. If it does that - I may walk up the pier to the cherry blossom exhibit during lunch time sometime next week. (Nice thing about Breaking Bad and new work location is they don't seem to notice if I'm gone for about an hour and half at lunch.)
**
On the reading front? I'm still in a reading slump. But I've almost made my way through the 285 page paperback book - The Botanist's Assistant by Peggy Townsend, which I got for Christmas. It's only been three months since I started reading it. It's similar in writing style to Lesson's in Chemistry, but a mystery, about a autistic botany lab manager trying to solve the murder of her boss, the Botany/Cancer researcher at a University in I think? Arizona. I'm not sure what state we're in. The POV is third person distant, which is a point of view I struggle with as a reader. We only see the protagonist's perspective, but the writing puts us at a distance from her somehow tonally. Also, the writer spends a lot of time talking about inconsequential matters that have no real bearing on the plot or the characters. I don't need to know all the things the protagonist does around her house. I get snippets of things - I do need to know, like her family background, her relationships at work, etc. It's a very distancing narrative style - and it reminds me a little of the difficulty I had watching Lesson's in Chemistry - I felt emotionally distanced watching it too.
Having more success listening to Jim Butcher's Dresden Files via audible.
I finished Twelve Months - narrated by James Marsters. It was good.
Better than Battleground, mainly because more character development and less fighting. Reading group battle scenes is about as entertaining as reading sex scenes, they get redundant after a while, and sometimes the writer gets bored and feels the need to spice things up, so redundant and unbelievable. Less is often more in this department. I also don't tend to like battle scenes - or books focusing on them. It's a personal preference.
Sex scenes - I prefer - to battle scenes. Battleground kind of had both.
Twelve Months has a little of both, or the suggestion of both, but not to the same degree?
I'm listening to Blood Rites now - which is focusing more on the sex scenes and less on battle scenes, although it has both, but again not to the degree Battleground did. Blood Rites is when Dresden finds out who Thomas Wraith is - and why he's been helping him. It's book five of the series? Battleground is book 12, I think? Twelve Months, I think is book 13. Dresden Files is possibly the only urban fantasy series that I've read with over ten books that works. Most filter out around the five book mark. Illona Andrews is the only other one that worked past book five - it has close to 12 in the Kate Daniels series as well. And I re-read most of them, or relisten to them - it works. Both manage to evolve the characters and progress a plot, plus add new and interesting characters along the way, while building an interesting world, and sticking withing the boundaries of their genres. Andrews does play more with their genre, while Butcher stays within the confines of his. They've ruined me for Urban Fantasy, though. I don't like any of the others. Laurel K Hamilton - went off the rails early on, as did Kim Harrison, and I gave up on the others.
I'd say more...and have more to ramble on about - but I've got to go to bed. Or I'll screw up my sleep schedule more than daylight savings time is going to do. At least the clocks will automatically change themselves, except for the oven and microwave oven clocks.
[ETA: Fixed the year, because I can't quite get used to the fact that it is 2026 yet...]
no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 04:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 08:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 07:44 pm (UTC)And thanks!
no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 08:31 am (UTC)Happy birthday for tomorrow!
Our clocks don't change for Summer until 29th March.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 07:40 pm (UTC)You're getting spring faster than we are at least.
Thanks for the birthday wishes.
Hmm. I'm not sure I want to use a system housed outside of the US right now though - things are weird. But thanks for the rec.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 07:43 pm (UTC)I couldn't do it on the computer, and no longer have a CD player, also the laptop doesn't have an ability to play CD's any longer.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 04:55 pm (UTC)Happy birthday tomorrow! Enjoy your cake.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 07:37 pm (UTC)I wish I had stuck with earthlink - but it was costing me money, and had issues, so maybe not. There isn't a good system. Work (which is Outlook under Microsoft) gets less spam than gmail, but it has it's issues too.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 09:07 pm (UTC)Hope you get the warming trend at last. We're expected to get a mild to warm week here, but apparently next week it's going to get cold again.